Ames Power Plant Load Centers Replacement

Introduction
At my internship at the Ames power plant, I was tasked with a project to replace 7 480 VAC load
centers with a new more reliable and safe system. The current load centers pose a substantial
safety and reliability risk. The oldest load centers breakers only have manual controls requiring
you to stand directly in front of the exposed bus in some instances to operate the breaker. The
other load centers used outdated breakers that have no spare parts or any market ready
replacements. To improve system reliability, I created a plan and request for purpose (RFP) to
obtain engineering services to help the city replace the load centers.
Research
The planning involved locating relevant drawings for the load centers and identifying/providing
the engineering firm with a good starting place for their design. I also had to learn and research
the current system to develop an understanding of what the load centers were doing. Through
this research I developed a list of the loads serviced by each load center, how each breaker was
controlled, and an understanding of the relaying scheme to protect and operate the breakers. I
also created several drawings in AutoCAD to communicate to the engineering firm the City’s
plan for the new Load Centers. Below is one of the 7 load centers that I worked on replacing.
With the help of the electrician, we opened the load centers to learn what each of the different
mechanisms do. The load center’s documentation was outdated and there were unidentified
switching devices on the load center. I worked to help provide a summary of what was found
and report it to the selected engineering firm.

Review
Through the project I discovered we could not replace the oldest load centers until another
project was completed. This was because this project involved what is known as protective
relaying. These relays act as control circuits for the large 13.8kV breakers. This relaying was not
documented and need to be before the project could move forward as these relays would directly
impact the installation of a new transformer that is required for reliability of the new load
centers. When I discovered this issue, I presented the information to my superior with several
options on how to deal with the issue. I propose we wait to replace the load centers until the
protective relaying was updated as well as a few other options. Ultimately the final decision was
up to my boss, and he agreed with me. They were able to pass the information on to our
technicians. After this conversation our technicians were redirected to complete redlines which
are updates documents and electrical drawings. This was necessary so we could move forward
with the project to replace the protective relaying and eventually the new load centers.
During this time, I was also responsible for helping the power plant review the potential
candidates for the load center replacement. I read through each engineering firms’ proposal and
evaluated them based on the criteria that we gave them in the RFP. After this we had a meeting to
discuss each person’s evaluation and decide who would be selected to complete the design of the
new load centers.

Conclusion
Through this project I was able to build and apply engineering skills. One of these skills was
learning to communicate with our technician Paul about the different load centers. He was highly
knowledgeable and provided me with a great resource for when I had questions about the load
centers drawings and other technical information. I also gained valuable written communication
skills though the drafting process of the RFP. During this project I developed confidence in my
ability to work with others and to speak up about issues that I have found with projects that need
to be addressed. I also worked on my knowledge of power systems in general. Through this
project I learned about lots of electrical equipment that I was unaware of prior to the project such
as current transformer, protective relaying, and SCADA systems.