Technical Tours

Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station

Tuesday, March 22, 07:30 - 15:00
Price: $50

Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is located 55 miles west of Phoenix and has the distinction of being the largest nuclear power plant in the United States. The plant consists of 3 generators that sit on 4,250 acres. Plant output is 4,030 net Megawatts and generated 30 million Megawatt-hours in 2009. The plant serves more than 4 million people in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. This plant is the only power plant that uses recycled water from the surrounding communities as its cooling water and it generates more electricity than any other power plant of any kind in the U.S. This technical tour will include a tour of the protected area of the power plant. This tour includes lunch at the plant.

Arizona State University Power Laboratory

Tuesday, March 22, 08:30 - 12:00
Price: $20

This technical tour will visit three of Arizona State University’s Power Engineering Laboratories, including the High Voltage Laboratory, the Power System Computational Laboratory, and the Advanced Power Electronics Laboratory.

About the ASU Power Engineering Program:

The ASU power engineering program is part of a NSF funded engineering research center, the Future Renewable Electric Energy Distribution Management (FREEDM) center. The FREEDM center deals with the use of solid state controllers and devices to implement a ‘next generation’ power distribution system, including distributed energy resources.

The group at ASU has recently been involved with several new projects dealing with the interface of renewable energy resources into the electric grid. These projects specifically deal with solar and wind resources. The projects examine the impact of high penetration of these resources on power system performance and reliability at the distribution and transmission level.

ASU is the lead university in the Power Systems Engineering Research Center (PSERC), an industrially and federally supported program of industry/university cooperation. Students are exposed to industrial projects, professional society meetings, laboratory experience, and research partially supported by PSERC. More information about PSERC may be found at http://www.pserc.org.

About the Laboratories:

High Voltage Laboratory
The ASU High Voltage Laboratory is located in the office complex in the Engineering Research Center on the 5th floor. This is a dedicated laboratory suitable for research in the high voltage engineering and insulation area. The main laboratory is equipped with an AC /DC power supply that supplies AC voltage variable between 0-100 kV and DC voltage variable between 0-200 kV. The DC voltage is generated by a voltage doubling rectifier, which is supplied by the HV transformer.

This power supply can be reconnected to a Marx generator to produce impulse voltages. The standard 1.2us/50us lighting impulse maximum voltage is 170 kV, while the standard switching surge impulse maximum voltage is 150 kV. The laboratory staff has experience in both steady state and impulse testing. The laboratory is equipped with a Heafely partial discharge detector and digital oscilloscopes to measure the impulse voltage shape. The laboratory is shielded to eliminate disturbances.

A smaller, enclosed area in the HV laboratory is dedicated to aging studies and has a vacuum chamber for testing small samples under low pressure. The area is served by a high voltage transformer, with variable voltage between 0-45 kV.

Built 15 years ago, the laboratory has served as a center for research projects and high voltage testing, including testing a high voltage optical current transformer for a local utility company, AC and impulse testing of aged 15 kV class cables sponsored by Arizona Public Service, research on ADSS fiber optic cables sponsored by Bonneville Power Administration, investigation of the dielectric strength of foam insulation, measurement of the breakdown voltage of paper insulation samples, evaluation of the efficiency of a pollution severity monitor for Sudden California Edison Co, and investigation of flashover mechanism of silicon rubber insulator surface.

This laboratory is somewhat unique in a university setting. The laboratory has been supported mainly by the electric utility industry and manufacturers for insulator testing, electric and magnetic field measurements, communications applications, fiber optics testing, and general high voltage and high current testing.

Fiber Optic Cable Aging Facility and HV Test Site
Within the six floors of the Engineering Research Center building a small HV test facility is dedicated for aging ADSS type fiber optic communication cables. The high voltage is generated by a 120 kV voltage transformer. The aging chamber is 15 feet long with a 4 ft by 4 ft cross-section. The chamber is equipped with UV lighting, rain, salt fog generator and a control system which regulates the duration of the different stresses. The system operates in 24 hour cycles. The system has operated for three years and evaluated the aging of ADSS fiber optic cables produced by different manufactures.

This area is also used for insulator studies and investigation of fiber optic voltage and current transformer operation.

Power Electronics and FACT Laboratory
ASU operates two Power Electronics Laboratories. One of the laboratories is dedicated to studying thyristor and IGBT controlled circuit operation, including modeling FACT equipment. The laboratory is equipped with six test branches and has impulse and signal generators, different DC voltage supplies up to 7000 V, digital oscilloscopes, and a data acquisition system. The standard voltage, current, and power measuring instruments are available for utilization by students. Recently the laboratory obtained digital relays and an interconnecting communication system.

In the past, the laboratory performed studies on the operation of different FACT circuits. The work included modeling and building small scale models. The students built a medium voltage pulse generator for biological experiments (300 V, 50 A, 10 us-1000 us) and experimented with a high voltage strip generator for 30 kV, 100 ns. Other projects included the testing of voltage sag effect on induction motors, building of a 230 V, 50 A sag generator, and development of a model for SCADA system intrusion detection. A significant amount of time was devoted to investigating the magnetic field produced by underground cables and other devices. Recent projects investigated the operation of optical instrument transformers’ operation and frequency response. A portion of the experimental work was performed in this laboratory.