Update on the Laskin Energy Project

Since the beginning of the semester, our group has been working at Laskin Energy Center towards our goal of:

1. Determining the necessary equations to calculate a variety of efficiencies throughout the plant.
2. Identifying the types of data collected by the plant instruments.

With the deadline of December 6^th, 2010 fast approaching, the Laskin team has made great strides in the last several weeks towards a successful completion of our project. As a team, we have divided the remainder of the project into four main components:

• Project Phase 1: Efficiency calculation spreadsheet with coding documentation
• Project Phase 2: Make recommendations for additional instrumentation
• Final presentation including PowerPoint and poster
• Final technical report

Laskin Energy Center, our client, uses a data collection program called PI Tag Configuration (software made by OSIsoft) to gather information throughout the plant. The data gathered by PI will be imported into our Excel program. Using the Excel VBA programming language, the customer can view near real-time data of the plant along with generating efficiency reports for a set date range.

Last week, Eric and I have traveled to Laskin in Hoyt Lakes, MN to determine how to use the PI data collection tool. We began by identifying how to acquire the current values for instrumentation data then moved on to gathering data for a specified date range. This is where our first troubles occurred. First, we had to figure out how to retrieve a range of data; second, there were no reference materials to figure out how to write VBA code for PI. After experimenting with PI, we were able to get the desired results from a date range but no code integration. We contacted OSIsoft via phone and were able to get help importing data into Excel using VBA. This critical information allowed for the coding of PI data retrieval. All that remains now for the first phase is to design a user interface which implements the code we have written. Hopefully by the end of the week, the first phase will be complete!

Reviewed by: Eric Schaupp