Challenge to those in instrumentation related to productivity and measuring power usage
H. Steinhauer · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1976
With the development of micro-modules and micro-processors, those in instrumentation are challenged to employ the principles of the Incremental Power Demand Computer (IPDC) to better utilize electric power in many applications. The IPDC was developed at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in 1959 for measuring 2,000,000 kW demand and to better utilize electric power in the production of enriched uranium. Two generations of the instruments have been used during the past 17 years to aid in the measurement and control of power usage and will be similarly used in the future when the plant load will be increased to 2,260,000 kW. The second generation IPDC measures in and out flow on 26 meters to accurately account for transfer of power through the plant substations from one power system to the other, as well as for the power utilized by the plant. This system also prints out the hourly load on each of the meters and is utilized for calculating the multi-million dollar electric power bill each month. The second generation IPDC uses solid-state components mounted on printed circuit boards for reliability. Pulses from the special pickups in the billing watt-hour meters are used by the IPDC to determine and display accurate plant power usage every six minutes. Application of these IPDC principles to many existing watt-hour meters would result in the better utilization of electric power.