Luego Te Toca a Ti
The learner is a 37-year-old senior project engineer at a fictional Madrid electricity distribution company who is offered the lead of a two-year…
About this simulation
A 90-minute, 4-round basic Express simulation for Spanish vocational training (Formacion Profesional), module 0673 Operacion en centrales electricas of the Tecnico Superior en Centrales Electricas (Real Decreto 258/2011).
The learner is Sheila Bergua, a newly qualified control-room operator of a fictional combined-cycle plant, through 2027: one 420 MW unit (a gas turbine, a heat-recovery boiler and a steam turbine with its condenser and cooling tower) whose energy is sold in the day-ahead and intraday markets, so that it owes an hourly programme.
Four situations set the year's course: a cold start for a 7:00 programme, and how the unit is started (counted back from the programme hour on the maker's curve) and how the generator is synchronised (the automatic synchroniser with the synchro-check relay, never the relay bypassed); a spring evening, and how the programme is followed (ramps started before the hour, the control desk told) and how the unit responds to a frequency dip (primary response in service); a summer afternoon, and how a falling condenser vacuum is answered (load reduced and the cause found, never the low-vacuum trip inhibited) and how the efficiency is managed (on the data); and a gas-turbine trip at the evening peak, answered by finding the cause before the restart (never reset again and again), and how the year's trips are recorded.
Three critical errors cap the round: the synchro-check relay bypassed, the low-vacuum trip inhibited, blind repeated resets. KPIs: availability, controllable operating cost, hours outside the programme a quarter and avoidable trips in the year. Lesson: following the load programme is part of the operation, not a commercial goal foreign to it. Spanish primary, English parity.
Fictional plant, company, town and people; real curriculum cited.
What participants learn
After the session, participants will be able to:
- Schedule a cold start back from the programme hour on the maker's curve, and synchronise the generator inside its acceptable values with the check relay in service
- Meet the hourly programme from the control room by starting ramps before the hour, keeping load inside the tolerance band and telling the control desk at once of any unavoidable deviation
- Explain why the unit's frequency response must stay in service on its droop and dead band, instead of a load limiter, a widened dead band or a governor chased by hand
- Analyze a falling condenser vacuum and the heat rate against the design curves to reduce load, find the cause and schedule washes on the data, never inhibiting the low-vacuum trip
- Decide when a tripped unit may restart by bringing it to a safe state and finding the cause in the sequence-of-events record, and write a trip report with its root cause
Who it is for
An introductory simulation that assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, designed for undergraduate courses. It also works in vocational and high-school programmes and in onboarding sessions.
How a session runs
- The instructor creates a session from the Eureka dashboard and invites the participants.
- Participants play 4 rounds. In each one they submit their decisions and the simulation calculates the results. The first round opens with: lunes 11 de enero, 3:10: el arranque en frío y la sincronización.
- The simulation can be run in English, Español.
- The instructor follows each participant's progress and results from the dashboard, and uses the class results for the debrief.