Power Plant Steam Superheater Control System: Preliminary Results and Experiences from the Field Tests

This paper describes a newly developed steam superheater control system and its integration into the real power plant control system. The developed control system is based on the principles of the model predictive control. It is intended to replace one part of the existing classical control system that is based on gain scheduled PID controllers. The paper starts with a short description of the controlled plant and then it continues with the description of the predictive controller and its integration into the structure of the existing control system. The main focus is on the results of the functionality tests. The preliminary results hitherto achieved demonstrate the capability of the developed control system and its application potential. However, at the same time, they also show that extensive simulation testing of a controller for such a complex system does not necessarily guarantee perfect control performance and several modifications of the controller will be needed to make it really applicable.