Centralised monitoring and control dispatch centre for the geothermal wellhead power plants in Kenya

Abstract

Wellhead geothermal power plants in Kenya’s Eburru and Olkaria geothermal fields are mostly located in remote and inconvenient places. These plants are located far apart from each other making operation and maintenance expensive and a challenge. Remote monitoring and control of these units will enhance the power plants availability, reduce maintenance, operational, and other related costs. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are used to monitor and control geographically dispersed plants. A good SCADA technology with a good communication infrastructure will enable the collection of real time data from all these scattered wellhead power plants to one control room. The real time monitoring and control of KenGen’s wellhead power plants in a centralised control centre will assist with rapid detection of faults, diagnosis and repair so that downtime of the units due to faults can be reduced, thereby increasing availability and efficiency. Design of a centralised SCADA system and communication network for the wellhead units and economic and financial analysis of this project is discussed in this paper. Optimisation of operation and maintenance costs without compromising safety and technical performance of a power plants is also discussed.