DCS for steam power plant automation

W

Thread Starter

wejdani

Hi List! For Engineering the control system for many steam power plants, I have to decide between many company's offer. Is there any evaluation/comparison report or other inofs relevant available on the WEB? which selection criteria should be considered? Is for example the Teleperm xp from SIEMENS reliable for power plant control? how about DCS from other companies likr ABB, HONEYWELL, FOXBORO,......, ? please advise me.
 
Foxboro know how is 100% reliable. Their latest product should met any Engineering project (Steam Power Plant). In Houston Texas you could have a very good product " Micon ".
 
For thermal power plants as a general practice one should use the DCS with interface to Auto/Manual station. Secondly Hardware reliability is very important I feel Foxboro and Yokogawa systems are better in this regard. Other things are more or less same in all DCS systems.
 
I don't see the message previously posted. I mentioned the high expertise of Foxboro in the Power Steam Plant. Their actual product should met any type of project. You may also gain high technical tutorial from: Micon in Houston Texas. Their multiloop system conglomerate to large system. Redundancy was some years ago the ultimate. Visit them. [email protected]
 
J
You may want to try Teletrol Systems (Teletrol.com). Teletrol Systems is one of the leaders on open protocol and integration of different systems and controllers, something I wouldn't reccommend being without for a steam plant. the programming is done with "C" and the controllers are very flexible. spread sheet and data base programs are easily integratable for both monitoring and control. good luck and email me if I can be of any help. jim johnson [email protected]
 
For thermal power plants as a general practice one should use the DCS with interface to Auto/Manual station. Secondly Hardware reliability is very important I feel Foxboro and Yokogawa systems are better in this regard. Other things are more or less same in all DCS systems.
 
J
You may want to try Teletrol Systems (Teletrol.com). Teletrol Systems is one of the leaders on open protocol and integration of different systems and controllers, something I wouldn't reccommend being without for a steam plant. the programming is done with "C" and the controllers are very flexible. spread sheet and data base programs are easily integratable for both monitoring and control. good luck and email me if I can be of any help. jim johnson [email protected]
 
When selecting a control system for a continous process, be it for the steam/power generation, petrocnemical or petroleum industries, two main criteria should be considered. 1. Can the system configuration/programing be changed or updated without having to take the control system off line? 2. Does the system provide redundancy for processor, I/O and HMI, and have on process swappable I/O and processor cards? I have posted to this list in much greater detail on this subject several times in the past. Check the archive or contact me direct via e-mail. John Beck Pennzoil Quaker State Refinery (for 5 more days) Shreveport, LA
 
I think you have to bear in mind that any comparison is always biased by the background of the evaluator. I have a rule of DCS's that the 1st system a person uses is always the one they think is the best. One thing I have noticed, is the difference in approach between the between the "Germanic" and "American" DCS's. If you are used to one approach, the other approach always seems inferior (or plane awful). The "Germanic" systems (ABB Melody , ABB Advant Master , Siemens Teleperm XP) look similar to each other and tend to have more limited flexibility, especially as far as screen displays. Things can be changed, but you have to go back to the OEM. In my biased opinion - Siemens TXP is the worst of the lot. TXP is normally based on Siemens S5 PLC's (old). It isn't very "open" - connecting 3rd party systems to it can be difficult. Siemens will also (if they configure the system in Germany) insist on using the KKS tagging system (which is fine if you use it already, but very confusing for technicians / operators if you don't). Germanic systems also tend to end up with complicated control schemes (the KISS principle doesn't seem to of been heard of in Germany), which tends to make debugging difficult. The "American" systems (ABB INFI-90, Westinghouse WDPF / Ovation, Foxboro, Honeywell) tend to be much more configurable. Anything is possible. The down side of this, is that you can end up with chaotic displays, operators can access settings you don't want them to, etc. The plus side is, they all have lots of experience and tend to do things the way there were done on previous projects - so you will end up with a system that is configured in a fairly standard way, but can be easily changed to suit any special requirements you have. You should also be aware that Honeywell have stated that they are pulling out of the power industry. I think another thing you should consider is support - DCS's tend to require fairly specialist knowledge - make sure who-ever you go with has field support which is close to site.
 
I think you have to bear in mind that any comparison is always biased by the background of the evaluator. I have a rule of DCS's that the 1st system a person uses is always the one they think is the best. One thing I have noticed, is the difference in approach between the between the "Germanic" and "American" DCS's. If you are used to one approach, the other approach always seems inferior (or plane awful). The "Germanic" systems (ABB Melody , ABB Advant Master , Siemens Teleperm XP) look similar to each other and tend to have more limited flexibility, especially as far as screen displays. Things can be changed, but you have to go back to the OEM. In my biased opinion - Siemens TXP is the worst of the lot. TXP is normally based on Siemens S5 PLC's (old). It isn't very "open" - connecting 3rd party systems to it can be difficult. Siemens will also (if they configure the system in Germany) insist on using the KKS tagging system (which is fine if you use it already, but very confusing for technicians / operators if you don't). Germanic systems also tend to end up with complicated control schemes (the KISS principle doesn't seem to of been heard of in Germany), which tends to make debugging difficult. The "American" systems (ABB INFI-90, Westinghouse WDPF / Ovation, Foxboro, Honeywell) tend to be much more configurable. Anything is possible. The down side of this, is that you can end up with chaotic displays, operators can access settings you don't want them to, etc. The plus side is, they all have lots of experience and tend to do things the way there were done on previous projects - so you will end up with a system that is configured in a fairly standard way, but can be easily changed to suit any special requirements you have. You should also be aware that Honeywell have stated that they are pulling out of the power industry. I think another thing you should consider is support - DCS's tend to require fairly specialist knowledge - make sure who-ever you go with has field support which is close to site.
 
J

Jose Montanez

Peter's overview is excellent though I must say that I personally prefer the "ABB" approach since to my experience they are very easy to work with. I've used AC110 / 160 for Fossil, Hydro and Nuclear Plant automation proyects including all external gear and plant. I can only say that the ABB approach is very object oriented/modular and straightforward and that it is consecuently based on reusability of software and hardware componets. This reusability is more at the "object/module" level and makes it very easy to build maintanable solutions and applications in a "LEGO (tm)" like manner. To make this more clear, Peter talked about:

ABB Melody
ABB Advant Master
ABB INFI-90

I would also add

ABB Hydro Power Control
ADVANT Power

These are all AB products somehow based on ADVANT OCS AC110, 160 or 4XX controllers. Each by itself may be good or not but the interesting part is their software "guts" since they can (with some work) be exchanged with each other or you can build your own system out of their different objects. As I stress again they are reusable which means that you can very easily depict your field knowledge into you process automation software this makes systems simple, understandable and maintanable.

Also you must understand ABB/ADVANTS are no "normal" PLCs they are more like dedicated computers (they have fast CPU and lots of memory thus making it easy to concentrate on the customer problem with no need to program "for the hardware" this again makes programming easy and verifiable. A reason we are using those now also for Nuclear Plants. They programming interface does even support multi or concurrent engineering which integrates concurrent CAD and other very advanced features.

There are several drawbacks though !! One is the comunication methods they use (AF100, HSL etc). Those are very primitive and can become a real headache if they aren't used the right way but with some discipline they can be handled very well. The AC 110/160 do also gordeously integrate to OPC which makes interoperation with other PLC and HMI like IFIX of ICONICS a very easy thing. ABB puts this all together into an engineering methodology that can be easily customized to fit any customer demand and serve there as the basic Asset Management Repository. All in all I think they have the best though a bit "intellectual" approach. But our work requires this since small little good applications do not necessarely add up to a big nice system. If you are to handle several plants , their subplant and gear and integrate them alltogether into a well functioning orchestra ABB/ADVANT definitely it is the best tool to go for. It exploits reusability and interoperability at its maximum. Peters remarks about the "right" support are also crucial but my experience is that ABB has an good service and there is also a broad 2 nd market to choose from. The rest of the systems mentioned by Peter (WDPF, SIEMENS ...) are really to focused in partial problems they do not add up to a whole system and you and up having a jungle of interfaces and so sources for trouble and cost. I would clearly dismiss Siemens since they are as Peter said outdated. WDPF is good (an old workhorse) but also very restricted to Westinghouse and not smoothly to intergrate into a larger system.

> I think you have to bear in mind that any comparison is always biased by the background of the evaluator. I have a rule of DCS's that the 1st system a person uses is always the one they think is the best. One thing I have noticed, is the difference in approach between the between the "Germanic" and "American" DCS's. If you are used to one approach, the other approach always seems inferior (or plane awful). The "Germanic" systems (ABB Melody , ABB Advant Master , Siemens Teleperm XP) look similar to each other and tend to have more limited flexibility, especially as far as screen displays. Things can be changed, but you have to go back to the OEM. In my biased opinion - Siemens TXP is the worst of the lot. TXP is normally based on Siemens S5 PLC's (old). It isn't very "open" - connecting 3rd party systems to it can be difficult. Siemens will also (if they configure the system in Germany) insist on using the KKS tagging system (which is fine if you use it already, but very confusing for technicians / operators if you don't). Germanic systems also tend to end up with complicated control schemes (the KISS principle doesn't seem to of been heard of in Germany), which tends to make debugging difficult. The "American" systems (ABB INFI-90, Westinghouse WDPF / Ovation, Foxboro, Honeywell) tend to be much more configurable. Anything is possible. The down side of this, is that you can end up with chaotic displays, operators can access settings you don't want them to, etc. The plus side is, they all have lots of experience and tend to do things the way there were done on previous projects - so you will end up with a system that is configured in a fairly standard way, but can be easily changed to suit any special requirements you have. You should also be aware that Honeywell have stated that they are pulling out of the power industry. I think another thing you should consider is support - DCS's tend to require fairly specialist knowledge - make sure who-ever you go with has field support which is close to site.
 
PeterM
We are currently evaluating various DCS systems for a a retrofit on an existing steam power plant. I am interested in specific comaparisons between "Germanic" and "American" DCS's, and since TXP is one of the sytems we are evalutaing I would appreciate any additional comments or information on this system.

> I think you have to bear in mind that any comparison is always biased by the background of the evaluator. I have a rule of DCS's that the 1st system a person uses is always the one they think is the best. One thing I have noticed, is the difference in approach between the between the "Germanic" and "American" DCS's. If you are used to one approach, the other approach always seems inferior (or plane awful). The "Germanic" systems (ABB Melody , ABB Advant Master , Siemens Teleperm XP) look similar to each other and tend to have more limited flexibility, especially as far as screen displays. Things can be changed, but you have to go back to the OEM. In my biased opinion - Siemens TXP is the worst of the lot. TXP is normally based on Siemens S5 PLC's (old). It isn't very "open" - connecting 3rd party systems to it can be difficult. Siemens will also (if they configure the system in Germany) insist on using the KKS tagging system (which is fine if you use it already, but very confusing for technicians / operators if you don't). Germanic systems also tend to end up with complicated control schemes (the KISS principle doesn't seem to of been heard of in Germany), which tends to make debugging difficult. The "American" systems (ABB INFI-90, Westinghouse WDPF / Ovation, Foxboro, Honeywell) tend to be much more configurable. Anything is possible. The down side of this, is that you can end up with chaotic displays, operators can access settings you don't want them to, etc. The plus side is, they all have lots of experience and tend to do things the way there were done on previous projects - so you will end up with a system that is configured in a fairly standard way, but can be easily changed to suit any special requirements you have. You should also be aware that Honeywell have stated that they are pulling out of the power industry. I think another thing you should consider is support - DCS's tend to require fairly specialist knowledge - make sure who-ever you go with has field support which is close to site.
 
P

Pierre T. Marchebout Urrea

John, do you think new field based architechtures are inadequate for continuos processes?,

 
Subsequent to this entry I have been informed that Honeywell have NOT pulled out of the power industry.
 
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