At Kruger’s Quebec-based Wayagamack mill, Schneider Electric, in conjunction with the Quebec government, supplied much of the electrical equipment installed in the Relance project.

Schneider Electric manufactured the connections from the main entry point to the Motor Control Centres (MCC) for the PM4 paper machine. From the 15 kV switchgear there are 7 to 8 routes into the mill, covering general electrification, the paper machines - including PM4 - and ancillaries such as lighting, water treatment pumps and stock preparation.

Schneider Electric supplied 15 substations, of which 13 include transformers that drop the voltage from 15 kV to 600 volts. They also manufactured and installed the power distribution breakers, which supply the motors on the paper machine and surrounding ancillary equipment such as fans and pumps. To allow each section to be controlled individually, each substation has between 4 and 5 breakers in each unit. Each breaker is rated between 1200 and 1600 amps, depending on the equipment it supplies. The other two 15 kV substations feed the Square D Motorpact arc-resistant medium voltage controllers and the variable speed drives.

Sector-based electrical system layout eliminates local disruptions

The PM4 paper machine includes 28 complete Motor Control Centre (MCC) line-ups, which equates to a total of 200 individual sections or bays. Because the electrical layout of the mill is divided into sectors, the operators can isolate, via the distributed architecture, single MCC sections without interrupting any of the other sectors. Eliminating the possibility of local disruption, the system has been designed to eliminate any chance of a “domino effect”, which could shut down the entire machine, or in the worst case scenario large parts of the whole plant.

The Motorpact medium voltage controllers are linked to Kruger’s intranet, which provides the backbone for the control system. This allows the company to access and monitor all electrical supply and consumption data, right down to the cost of running individual sections of the mill and the new paper machine.

Transparent Ready helps optimize power consumption

“As energy prices are now being deregulated in North America, it has become ever more essential to monitor every aspect of consumption and the cost of power supply”, observes Eric Deschênes, Industrial Sector Marketing Manager, Schneider Electric. “We need to ensure that we are accessing clean power, avoiding spikes, monitoring and controlling allowable power and sequencing start-up and shutdown, negating any unexpected interruptions. Transparent Ready can provide this at a click of a mouse. Within five minutes we can completely reallocate power requirements at the touch of a button, while at the same time monitoring the power consumption of equipment such as individual fan motors.”

The Transparent Ready system installed at Wayagamack is designed using open communications so that Kruger’s equipment can link with Metso’s ProfiBus. It can also talk to all Fieldbus and Modbus technology.

As reported by ARC Advisory Group, a Dedham, Massachusetts, USA-based provider of strategic planning and technology assessment services, “Schneider Electric’s platform is one of the few industrial automation architectures available today that delivers the functionality necessary to meet emerging manufacturing requirements. Standard interfaces that enable seamless integration between the plant floor and the rest of the enterprise are key enablers behind the collaborative automation architectures required today”.

This project was secured by Patrick Perreault, Sales Representative, Schneider Electric. For more information, on this project, please contact him at patrick.perreault @ca.schneider-electric.com.