Tractebel's San Gabriel, Calif., Facility Undergoes Dramatic Transformation in Less Than Two Days

PITTSBURGH (March 5, 2001) -- Using its newly developed "automated migration tools" Westinghouse Process Control, Inc., a subsidiary of Emerson (NYSE: EMR), completed another power plant process control system modernization in record time - ensuring a plant in Los Angeles County would be a reliable source of power for Californians.

Tractebel Electricity & Gas International's San Gabriel facility began a planned outage at 7 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 13 to upgrade its WDPF® distributed control system (DCS) to the state-of-the-art Ovation® Information & Control System. San Gabriel was generating megawatts at full capacity before the day ended Sunday, Jan. 14, able to fulfill a request for power it received from Southern California Edison that afternoon, and ready to supply businesses on Monday.

Prior to the upgrade, the San Gabriel facility experienced recurring operation and maintenance problems as it responded to the electric generation demands of the California energy crisis. A short, planned outage - strategically scheduled for a time when businesses use less energy - allowed San Gabriel to install the Ovation® system, thereby significantly decreasing the risk of an unplanned outage during peak energy-use times and improving the reliability of the 40 megawatts of electricity and the steam it generates for the paper industry.

"When we tendered out bids for the control system upgrade, Westinghouse stood out from the competitors with their migration tools and commitment of minimum plant downtime," said Bill King, San Gabriel plant manager. "In less than 12 hours the control system was powered back. By the following afternoon, Westinghouse was waiting on plant contractors who were completing mechanical maintenance in parallel to start up the plant. We were encouraged when the plant was at full power for Monday morning peak with no major issues - the migration to Ovation® was simply a resounding success."

The "automated migration tools," modernization techniques applied by Westinghouse Process Control engineers, allow owners of its WDPF® technology, like San Gabriel, to migrate to the company's groundbreaking Ovation® system with minimal re-engineering and system re-tuning. The tool converts WDPF® graphics and logic codes to Ovation's advanced open architecture in a reduced period of time, helping customers to avoid the lengthy outages usually necessary for traditional modernization.

"The benefits a facility can see from modernization - including reductions in maintenance and materials costs, improvements in heat rate and reductions in unit start-up time - are often overlooked for fear of long outage periods," said Ann Pauley, president, Westinghouse Process Control. "Although San Gabriel is a smaller facility, having it on-line and providing reliable energy is important to Californians. We're glad our automated tools limited the outage to less than two days, while improving the plant's ability to generate power for areas in need."

Migration to the Ovation® system provides enhanced system functionality and process efficiency while reducing risks related to component obsolescence. At San Gabriel, Westinghouse replaced seven controllers from the plant's WDPF® system, and installed four Ovation® engineering and operator stations and a historian station among other equipment, moving the plant from 15-year-old computer technology to a microprocessor-based, Java-enabled system. When the WDPF-to-Ovation® migration was completed, San Gabriel had a fully functional Ovation® system - not an interim or hybrid system that typically results when other process control systems are upgraded.

Westinghouse began to focus on the automated tool in January of 2000 with the help of The Bay County Resource Recovery Facility, a small waste-to-energy power generation plant in Panama City, Fla. The plant needed to upgrade its control system to meet Clean Air Act regulations and offered to field-test the migration tools technology for Westinghouse.

In April, with the tools' help, Bay County modernized in under just 60 hours. Westinghouse confirmed the ability and value of its migration tools in October when engineers migrated the 1,500-megawatt Midland Cogeneration Venture in Midland, Mich. in just two days.

"In today's changing power generation environment, facilities need thoughtful technology to improve output while optimizing all aspects of operation," Pauley said. "Our new automated tool takes some of the fear out of modernizing, and allows our customers to retain much of the investment they made in their current hardware, engineering and tuning."

As in a traditional WDPF-to-Ovation® migration without help from the automated tools, customers are able to retain WDPF's Q-Line I/O and cabling, significantly lowering the cost of updating technology. Customers have the option of later moving to the Ovation® I/O, also designed for fast, easy installation. WDPF® cabinets stay in place, and are updated with an Ovation® Controller Fieldkit - based on a standard, industrial Pentium PC configured to provide reliability, fault-tolerance and full redundancy. The tools can be used to migrate both Classic and WEStation-based WDPF® systems.

The San Gabriel Cogeneration Facility is a combined-cycle, natural gas-fired facility located in the San Gabriel valley in the town of Pomona in the eastern portion of Los Angeles County. It is part of Tractebel Power, which provides competitive advantages through the supply of low cost, high-value energy utility products and services.

Westinghouse Process Control, Inc., is a global supplier of advanced distributed process control and information systems. The Pittsburgh-based company is a recognized leader in developing plant-wide process control solutions for the power generation, water treatment and wastewater treatment industries. Westinghouse Process Control is part of Emerson's Fisher-Rosemount family of companies. Information on the company, its Ovation® system, and migration options is available at www.westinghousepc.com.

St. Louis-based Emerson (www.gotoemerson.com) is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions to customers in process control; electronics and telecommunications; industrial automation; heating, ventilating and air conditioning; and appliance and tools. Sales in fiscal 2000 were $15.5 billion.