Difference between Triconex PLC & Other PLC

Hello Mr. Ravi,

It is not a fact that Triconex is the only product for safety applications like ESD & FGS. I used to use Triconex earlier but eventually we replaced all the Triconex systems with other Safety PLCs due to support issue, availability of spares and overall operating costs for maintaining Triconex PLC.

There are now good systems available from Siemens, GE Fanuc, Honeywell, ICS, HIMA in the market at more competitive rates meeting all the functional requirements for ESD and FGS applications as that of Triconex.

We have Honeywell's FSC in one refinery and we are very much satisfied with the performance and support we are getting from Honeywell for the same. In fact the engineering is very easy and we are doing the necessary changes ourselves in the plant. For new expansion we are commissioning Safety Manager for both ESD and FGS applications. We found it is further better than FSC in design and for maintenance.

So don't worry... You are now not dependent on only Triconex.

Regards,
Prasad
 
Triconex has been releasing new modules and supporting two TMR product lines, the Tricon and the Trident. They have a new Communicaitons module which supports Modbus TCP, Modbus Serial, and even embedded OPC (no external OPC server PC required). The Next generation TMR AI modules offer 14 bit resolution, while the next generation TMR DO offers 32 points which are point selectable with configurable open and short circuit thresholds for line monitoring. There are even newer hart solutions for the Tricon and Trident which do not require an external third party termination panel. They have several installations at Nuclear generating stations world wide...even on the reactors (1E Safety).

In my humble opinion....you should take another look at TRICONEX. Don't beleive what the competition has been saying about Triconex is behind the times. DCS vendors have been offering their inferior safety systems practically for free for years. MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND...
 
Dear RAVI,
Please don't forget that PLCs are made more like an empty pages of a book that a programmer or a designer would write on it according to his design of solving a certain tasks. This would mean that a PLC would just be as effective as the programmer. If we would start to compare PLC then more likely there would be a never ending battle of Brands since PLC manufacturers are mostly defending his grounds. As one says a good food recipe would not guarantee the taste of a finish dish but the one who cooks and taste test.

Talking about Fault Tolerant is a very broad issue. One thing is that there are what we call External and Internal Faults. There are also what we call Regenerative Faults and infectious faults. Now designing a fault tolerant system would not lies only on the PLC but you should also look into its auxilliary systems like the power supply, or the Transient protection or the EMI protection and etc. ITs better to look for a good Engineer who can design this protection system than looking for a better PLC.

RTJAKO


 
J
> RAVI asks about reliability of triplicated PLCs.

The fact is that Triplicating PLCs gains little if you rely on single input signals.

We use triplicated input signals (one for each channel) and a fault diagnostic system, to achieve far higher reliability and fault tolerance than any other system. We control vital power for major banks, and also military installations. It IS possible to remove ALL single points of failure in the control system
 
C

Claude Lovell

I have to differ with you on this one Roy. I am a turbomachinery consultant with Triconex and have done turbine controls on many different platforms in the past. The Tricon is both the most reliable I've used and it is also BY FAR the easiest to program and troubleshoot. Way far...

Triconex is not the newest or fastest design of PLC on the market...this is because we have a 15 year product lifecycle.... we hang on to what works and works well. But we are unmatched in reliability and longevity of our product.

Yes, TMR is expensive. However, my observation is that on a big project with lots of I/O and engineering (like a Gas Turbine, for example) the difference in hardware price can be as little as 20% of the entire project. On big projects where reliability is important TMR is well worth the premium.

I've visited sites where a Tricon system has accumulated years of neglect and had large numbers of point faults on multiple cards (from years of hard use) and the turbine was running great!

I've done many non ESD projects on this platform and can safely say it is a great platform for any control project that can benefit from reliable hardware.
 
C

Claude Lovell

Wow, that is a really hard question to answer.

In general, you can expect to pay 2-3 times the non 1E price for the hardware. Probably 3-5 times as much for the engineering due to the huge extra burden of QC and such depending on the size of teh project. As someone who works on these projects I can tell you that vendors are not making a killing charging these higher prices... the administrative and regulatory challanges involved in such projects are very significant.
 
Dear Ravi,

I am also working on the Safety Systems. But what i found is, there are also other brands of PLC's which are less costly for eg. PRO-SAFE, which we can use for SIL1-SIL4. But mostly i will prefer for "Safety Manger (R131.5)". Latest release from Honeywell, its IEC61508 approved and also user friendly. Even for remote sites like Offshore we can remotely perform OLM in running plant. Its MTTF is about 55 years...
so what else you want...

More than 15000 IO's you can configure in single PLC.

Cheers;
Yogesh
 
Hi Yogesh, Ravi and others,

Have a look at RTP 3000 system (www.rtpcorp.com). I have seen the device and we have recently ordered it too. 3 year warranty, one time purchase of software tools, MTTF figure of more than 3000 years - something what every industry dreams of and is a reality with rtp. Have a look and possibly see the live demo from their team. Just wonderful and awesome.

Raghavan
 
T
Raghavan,

How did the RTP 3000 perform for you? Do you recommend the product? I understand that RTP Corp only sells it and does not participate in applying the product, i.e. design, engineering, packaging, installation, etc. Are you happy with the integration firm?

Troy
 
There is a difference between Fail Safe and Multi-Fault Tolerant. In general, any of the SIS offer very good diagnostics. The reason that you do not ALWAY chose an SIS like Triconex, Honeywell or Rockwell ICSTriplex is that it is simply not necessary. There is a reason that the Allen-Bradley/Rockwell Automation Logix Family and Siemens S7 family dominate the PLC global market. They are sufficient for the application they are installed in. They are easy to use, they are very flexible, people are trained on how to use them, they are well supported (depending on the region in the world) and the facilities have inventory for their plant.

By the way Rockwell/Allen-Bradley offers SIL3 fail safe controllers (GuardLogix and CompactGuardLogix) that program with the same software as the rest of their Logix family and they offer two TMR SIL3 Fault Tolerant solutions (ICSTriplex - AAdvance and ICSTriplex - Trusted). It is totally dependent on the application and Safety Integrity Level required, not to mention that if de-energized state would create an unsafe situation, fault tolerance is needed.
 
Troy,

Yes. We are extremely happy with RTP3000 SIS. Hardware is excellent - no qualms about it at all. The System Integrators are good in engineering and installation. Our engineers too did a lot of work to put the system in place. On the product front, nothing can beat RTP3000.

Raghavan.
 
J

john stempeck

Raghavan and Troy,

We are trying to understand how often the major vendors of PLC's make major changes to their systems. That is, what is the product life cycle of PLC's (or DCS)? Clearly they want them to last as long as possible due to software integration, etc., but technology seems to be moving at an accelerated pace.

John
 
V

Vitor Finkel CAP

Sorry, but I strongly disagree. This seems to be just an "Infomercial" towards a specific product/vendor, and that is not supposed to be acceptable in this site.

<b>Moderator's note: We do allow vendors to recommend their products in replies to messages. There is no evidence that this reply is by a Triconex employee</b>

There are 3 worldwide known TMR vendors. It is not possible to assure one of them is better than the other 2. There are several SIS PLC logic technologies, such as TMR, complimentary processors, Hardware Diagnostic Channels, etc., And none of them absolutely better than the others.

> I have used many PLCs and many safety PLCs (SIS) in the past. None come close to Triconex Tricon, so far.

---- snip ----
 
Only if your safety system requires a triplicated processor, I/O, power supply, etc. If your safety system does not require this then why would you punish yourself with a Triconex system, which would then require staffing triconex programming engineers to come out and engineer your safety system. A lot of people see the up front glamour of these TMR systems, but what they don't see is the engineering required to program these system, which is a tremendous cost to be added when you have to hire on a Triconex engineer for $200-300/hour.

Dustin
 
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