Young & Franklin offers compact analog PID controllers to our customers in the power generation industry. The Y&F 8605 Series PID controllers are available for servo control of Y&F electrohydraulic fuel valves and are also suitable for any other application requiring closed loop control for pressure, flow, position or temperature.

Y&F gained valuable insights from third party retrofitters such as Petrotech and BTEC Turbines when developing the 8605 Series single- or dual-LVDT PID controllers for turbine controls upgrades. Today customers such as Turbine Technology Services, Texas Gas Transmission, Columbia Gas Transmission, ConocoPhillips and American National Power call on Young & Franklin for PID boards because of their compact size, excellent performance and ease of installation and calibration.

Y&F's PID boards installed at Ceredo site

We are grateful to Reliant Energy's Gowanus GT power plant in Brooklyn, New York, for serving as our beta site for the new Y&F PID boards. Petrotech, Inc. based in Belle Chase, Louisiana, worked with Y&F Electrical Engineer Earl Holdren at Gowanus to install 16 boards as replacements on eight GE Frame 5 units. These boards are used to control Y&F combined stop/ratio and control valves. Because of their successful installation and operation, we've been told more replacements are anticipated for the future.

Ryan Curry, Petrotech's Project Engineer, tells us Petrotech needed to find another solution for controlling GE Frame 3 turbines at Columbia Gas Transmission's Ceredo compression station and ConocoPhillips Alaska's North Slope sites because "the (existing boards) were labor intensive as far as calibrating. Often we had to repeat the calibration process. Young & Franklin boards are very simple to calibrate and save time. The boards are very straight forward and easy to understand." These sites each utilize two boards to control Y&F's combined speed/ratio and control valves and one board for variable nozzle control.

Another PID success story comes out of Midlothian, Texas. Earl worked with Roger Brown, Condition Based Maintenance Specialist for American National Power's Midlothian power plant, on a strategy for designing the complete control cabinet using Y&F's PID boards. "I would love to replace all of our boards at the site," Roger says, clearly pleased with the performance of the Y&F 8605 Series PID boards.

The word is spreading that Y&F PID boards are easy to install and solve a variety of control issues. BTEC Turbines, located in Houston, Texas, is working to restore power in Iraq, and Y&F PID boards are part of their controls scheme. Alan Warmouth, BTEC Operations Manager, noted that at one site a Y&F PID board controlled an IGV actuator and "worked very well for our application."

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