Orlando firm offers triple modular redundant systems for turbine control

Turbine Technology Services Corporation (TTS), a gas turbine engineering services firm based in Orlando, FL, has designed a solution to offer triple modular redundancy (TMR) for gas turbine control applications. This solution leverages control technology from Rockwell Automation, a provider of automation controls and information solutions based in Milwaukee, WI.

Core to the TMR gas turbine solution is a Rockwell Automation Trusted TMR controller designed to provide enhanced safety and availability for power generation and gas compression applications. The Trusted controller incorporates a fault-tolerant architecture to help eliminate spurious system trips. It also provides high availability as part of its inherent safety-related functionality.

Identifies source of fault

The TMR design uses a majority voting process to identify the source of a fault. Random hardware failures will cause one of three process control “slices” to react differently to the others. This discrepancy can then be captured and reported by the voting system. The TMR system reacts immediately to control-system faults, helping meet the user's safety integrity requirements.

Over the past decade the central Florida-based gas turbine engineering company has worked on projects in North and South America, Asia, and Africa. Aging power plants and gas compressor stations in these locations often require upgrade and modernization services to extend their operational lifetime in order to reduce outages and decrease downtime.

Tony Thornton, president of Turbine Technology Services, said the timing of this new initiative is significant given the number of GE “F” class gas turbines that are fast approaching a need for TMR control system retrofits.