Electrical CAD software takes to the field

An Aucotec product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 5, 2006

Aucotec UK Sales Engineer Mark Hassell has recently completed a contract at the Nathpa Jhakri Hydroelectric Project. Geoff Lilleker explains.

Loacted on the river Satluj in the north east of India this is a run of the river scheme to provide up to 1500MW of power from six machines at the village of Jhakri.

The water is directed from the dam site at Nathpa via a 26km tunnel including three silt flushing chambers all dug into the mountains that are a part of the foot hills of the Himalayas in that part of Himachel Pradesh.

"My brief initially, was to provide the software for a number of Allen Bradley PLC systems that were to control the silt flushing gates and the guard valves", says Hassell.

"Later I was required to go to site to do the electrical commissioning for the gates package which also involved the five radial gates on the dam, and the various gate hoists that could be used for isolating various sections of the underground workings whether for maintenance or an emergency".

"Unfortunately the drawings I was provided with at site were causing me many problems", continues Hassell.

"They were out of date which meant there were many instances where they did not match the equipment supplied".

"Because of a shortage of relay contacts extra relays had been added which were not even shown on the drawings".

"Many device terminal numbers were missing making it difficult to follow them".

"Perhaps worst of all the drawings had been done on a package that allowed more and more devices to be added to the same sheet by scaling the existing drawing down which meant that when they were printed out they were impossible to read without the aid of a magnifying glass".

"When a lot of the job involved working in poorly lit tunnels underground this was obviously an impossible situation".

"Lastly by the very nature of commissioning I had to do many circuit modifications which also needed incorporating accurately into the drawings for final issue to the client and included into the of maintenance manuals".

"Happily I had my laptop with me and my Elcad software loaded on it", says Hassell.

"The nights are long in that remote and isolated part of the world so it became a simple matter to redo all the electrical drawings in a short space of time to the immense benefit of the project and I have to say the relief of the client".

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