ABB upgrades control system of Philippines’s largest plant

ABB has upgraded the distributed control system of the 1,200 megawatt Ilijan combined-cycle power plant in Batangas City.

Owned by independent power producer KEILCO, it is the largest power generation facility in the Philippines and part of the country's gas-to-power project, which uses natural gas from the offshore Malampaya field to generate electricity at Ilijan and two other combined cycle power plants.

Among its many new features the enhancement will upgrade the operator stations and servers and significantly increase the speed of the network, as well as provide loop segmentation to enable partial shutdown of the plant in planned or emergency situations.

ABB is implementing the installation online to minimize the plant shutdown to just final testing and a short planned outage, thereby enabling the plant to maintain its target availability of 90 percent.

Ilijan has the distinction of housing the Philippines' biggest reverse osmosis desalination plant and first 500 kV switchyard.

ABB supplied the original DCS solution in the early 2000s, and is enhancing the system to provide the plant with cutting-edge capability while simultaneously protecting the customer’s original investment.