Senior Design Project


CIPCO
Power Plant - Relay Replacement

ISU Senior Design Group: Dec15-22

by Dan Dye
 

CIPCO

Central Iowa Power Cooperative (CIPCO) is Iowa's largest cooperative energy provider serving 13 rural electric cooperatives and associations spanning 58 of Iowa's 99 counties. CIPCO's members serve populations of nearly 320,000 rural and urban residents and approximately 12,000 commercial and industrial accounts. CIPCO is a generation and transmission cooperative supplying power to its member distribution cooperatives covering a territory which stretches 300 miles diagonally across the state from the Mississippi River on the east to the Shenandoah in the southwest.

CIPCO supplies all power requirements for its member cooperatives, and as their power provider, CIPCO is dedicated to delivering quality, safe, and reliable service at the lowest possible cost.

CIPCO locations include Cedar Rapids, Creston, Des Moines, Montpelier, and Wilton employing approximately 130 people. 

Project Description

There are three parts to this senior design project. The first part of the project is to produce a complete design package to replace four electromechanical relays that control metal clad switch gear inside a power plant.  The existing relays will be replaced with microprocessor based SEL relays. The second part of this project is to complete arc flash calculations and analysis on the existing switch gear. The third part of this project will be identifying two engineering solutions to operate the metal clad switch gear and relay equipment safely.