STEEL DYNAMICS HEARTLAND DIVISION BOOSTS SAFETY AND RELIABILITY WITH POWER PROTECTION UPGRADE

ABB has teamed up with Steel Dynamics Heartland Division (SDI Heartland) to modernize aging substation equipment with an upgrade of switchgear doors, protection relays and controls at its 18-breaker substation. SDI Heartland produces various types of value-added, flat rolled steel by further processing hot-rolled coils into pickle and oiled, cold rolled and galvanized products.

With a facility comprising a continuous pickle line, a two-stand reversing cold mill, batch annealing bases, a temper mill and a galvanizing line, SDI Heartland boasts an annual capability to pickle and cold-reduce one million tons of steel and galvanize 360,000 tons.

SDI Heartland faced the challenge of repairing vintage relays and chose ABB’s Electrification Service team as their partner to replace them with new technology essential to ensuring reliable power supply to the mill and avoiding costly downtime.

Opting for ABB’s Relion^® 615 series as the new protection relays, these compact and versatile devices offer protection, control, monitoring and supervision all in one relay. In addition, for increased safety, the relays include arc flash protection, based on optical arc flash detection with fiber-optic light sensors, tripping at arc faults in milliseconds.

To demonstrate the performance and capabilities of the Relion^® relays, ABB initially replaced two of the old unreliable relays in SDI Heartland’s substation. The successful smaller-scale project gave SDI Heartland the confidence and conviction to move forward and replace the remaining 16 relays in the medium-voltage line-up.

Beyond a modern set of protection and control relays that help keep the substation operating at optimal conditions, ABB’s Relion^® 615 series relays also include communications capabilities, enabling SDI Heartland to monitor their main relays and understand what each of their feeders is doing. This enhanced communication capability combined with the confidence of modern relay technology will be critical as SDI Heartland grows.

The company is currently undergoing an expansion project that has added a second galvanizing line and a paint line. SDI Heartland has once again selected ABB for the new switchgear and commissioning work that will support these new lines.