Free software available for alarm management and notification

 

Exele Information Systems, a developer of manufacturing and process control software, has made availabile a free version of its TopView Alarm Management and Notification software. TopView Free is a non-expiring version of TopView intended for applications with at most five monitored points. It provides one Remote Viewer (TopView client) connection. There are many processes and systems with a limited number of critical measurements where it is imperative that measurement conditions are monitored and appropriate personnel notified of the abnormal events.

The software is said to be easy-to-use and works well with various data sources including SCADA, PLC, Historian, and SQL Database products.  “The software has all the same notification, alarm logging, alarm reporting, and alarm-analytic capabilities as the full TopView version. It’s not a trial system that only runs for limited a period,” says Mike Fishman, Exele VP.

Exele Information Systems Inc.
Exele.com

How to network a wind farm

 

Chinese manufacturer Dongfang Steam Turbine Works (DSTW) was working on a wind farm project of 66, 1.5-MW turbines and had to establish a SCADA system to remotely monitor on-site equipment and operations while recording operation data for real-time analysis. To make matters worse, Northeast China’s harsh weather called for rugged and reliable networking devices.
The company also decided the system needed network redundancy with a fast recovery for system reliability, and at least three fiber-optic ports for uplink and long distance outbound transmissions. In addition, network-management software had to monitor and manage the system without undue complexity.

After sufficient evaluation, the Chinese engineers selected MOXA/s rack mount managed industrial Ethernet switches an excellent fit for their network infrastructure requirements.

Moxa engineers suggested installing one industrial Ethernet switch (EDS-208A-M-SC) atop each wind turbine to connect to the equipment inside the turbine. This switch connects to another switch (EDS-408A-2S1M-ST-T) at the bottom of the turbine by a fiber optic port. The switch comes with three fiber optic ports, one of which is the uplink connection to the EDS-208A and the other two connect to adjacent wind turbines.
Due to high security and availability requirements, the company used a ring topology in the wind-farm network for fast redundancy in case of network failure. The control center uses Moxa’s rackmount managed industrial Ethernet switches (IKS-6726) to connect field switches with the SCADA system and network management servers. MXview 1.0 network management software then helps operators monitor network status by automatically discovering the network topology and displaying real-time alarm information. The software supports SNMP V1, V2c, and V3, and presents historical traffic statistics and event logs for troubleshooting. The equipment is rated for -40 to 75°C.

Moxa Industrial Network Solutions
www.Moxa.com

How efficient is your wind plant? Service tells

A renewable-energy consulting and information company says it offers Operational Wind Plant Performance Reporting Services. The service, from AWS Truepower, leverages the in-house knowledge and expertise of its staff as well as its state-of-the-art software application SHARP (System Health Analysis Reporting Program), which works well with industry standard SCADA data, helping make comprehensive and efficient reporting cost effective.

 

The new service is said to free up valuable time from plant operators and will make reporting detailed information on plant operations on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis more efficient and cost effective for wind-plant owners and operators.

“We want to allow busy operators more time to focus attention on plant optimization by becoming an extension of their operations and maintenance team,” says AWS Truepower Applications Engineer Paul Legac. “The performance reports will contain plant and turbin- level energy production and wind speeds, as well as key performance indicators such as energy and time weighted availability and capacity factor. Depending on the data, detailed information regarding energy lost and turbines affected for all events will be included along with recommendations for potential mitigating strategies for the most costly events.”
A few benefits of reporting service include:

• Time efficiency: It lets managers to increase their attention to plant operations and performance optimization by not having to perform analysis

• Quantifies plant underperformance: Quicker weekly, monthly, and annual operational performance reports, thereby enabling prompter action to evaluate and improve production

• Extension of operations and maintenance team: Reports are reviewed by AWS Truepower’s staff and summary insights mitigate underperformance and faults.

 AWS Truepower LLC
www.awstruepower.com/solutions/wind/performance-assessment/operational-performance-reporting/

Software helps run the wind farm

WindHelm Portfolio Manager software is says to improve project efficiency while reducing wind farm operational costs. This release also delivers reporting for North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) Generating Availability Data System (GADS) analysis.

The developer says the software provides a single platform to monitor, optimize, and control of any combination of operational turbines, farms, and portfolios. A single platform gives owners and operators uniform access to, and analysis of, their SCADA data. Operators can access “near real time” data from any web browser, and alerts can be sent out via email, mobile phone or pager. In this configuration, no extra equipment or software is required at the project site. Meanwhile, WindHelm Live offers real time operational control.

Developed from GL Garrad Hassan’s independent SCADA product, WindHelm is compatible with any SCADA system with an ODBC/OPC interface, including all existing GH SCADA systems. It provides summary and detailed operational reports, including power curves, availability, meteorological data, faults/events, efficiency, and actual vs. expected production. Forensic analysis and data trending is available at the turbine, project and portfolio level.

To improve the performance of generating equipment, and to generate industry data for use in benchmarking and decision-making, WindHelm supports reporting for NERC’s Generating Availability Data System, both for individual wind farms and across entire wind portfolios. Component taxonomies for standardization and benchmarking of fault analysis are accommodated and taxonomy from the EU R&D project RELIAWIND project is included.

GL Garrad Hassan
www.glgarradhassan.com

SCADA for ground-based process management

SCADA in wind turbines reports on their rotor speed, lube temperatures, voltage outputs, and more. The data tells how well the turbine is performing. V9.04 of Fast/Tools, a web-based SCADA system, now allows for remote maintenance, deployment, and real-time management of process applications via secure web-based services. The software works well on remote processes, managing assets, and collecting and storing data in widely distributed applications. This allows increasing overall equipment efficiency and return on assets.

 

Being able to manage a plant remotely drives down operating costs and improves information sharing and exchanging. The proliferation of decision support and collaboration centers makes it possible to access data from a variety of sources and share it globally. A few more recent functions make it possible to:

Record HMI displays in real time. Like a flight recorder, this allows a synchronized playback of screens with alarms and events as well as process and trend data. This includes all mouse tracks and relevant keyboard strokes. Recorded video data helps with cause-and-effect analysis, operator training, and simulation to increase overall safety, security, and regulatory compliance. This adds a significant new dimension to the capabilities of this software, which already includes audit trailing and diagnostics functions.

E-mail notification and alarm reporting. In addition to standard EEMUA 191 compliant alarm-management functions, the software can email alarm notifications in real time to appropriate users. This call-out function makes it easy to define when, where, and to whom notifications should be sent. Alarm management also allows exporting alarm and event notifications to programs such as MS-Excel for alarm analysis.

Advanced trending capabilities have been extended with functions that show whether a signal is off-line. In addition, automatic or manual data backfill can display recovered data, letting operators confirm at a glance the integrity of trended signals. X-Y plots add to the rich trending library, allowing 2D views of important process characteristics.

Foundation fieldbus faceplate library with symbols says its improved with Foundation fieldbus faceplates that may be used together with Yokogawa’s Stardom (FCN/FCJ) autonomous controllers for increased flexibility in distributed applications. Faceplates are assigned to the control logic based on the controller function blocks and are ready to use when deployed in the system. This allows for seamless integration of Foundation fieldbus device messages and data, setting a new standard for Operational Excellence. Main target markets include renewable energy and power.

Yokogawa Corporation of America
www.yokogawa.com/us

Purchase of SCADA tech puts smart grid in reach

CG Automation, a subsidiary of MSE Power Systems Inc., has acquired ADMS Wind SCADA and wind-turbine-monitoring systems from Second Wind Systems Inc. Combining SCADA with its expertise in utility automation, MSE Power Systems and CG Automation can offer more reliable, interconnections for smart-grid designs.

CG Automation provides automation products and systems to electric utilities and renewable-energy industries. Ownership of Second Wind’s systems complement CG Automation’s portfolio and broadens its services to the renewable energy market. “Combining Second Wind’s ADMS with our XCell Substation Automation products and services will let CG Automation provide wind farm management and interoperability,” said CG Automation CEO Sam Sciacca. “We also see potential applications for this technology in the solar market.”

MSE Power Systems

www.msepower.com

The next generation in wind power asset management

Wind operators must squeeze out every watt they can when the wind is blowing. To do so, wind projects must be reliable and maintained with minimum cost. With variable winds, high costs, and slim margins, everything has to work right to make sure that wind is attractive alternative power and a sound economic investment. So if a turbine is to work 20 years or more before retiring, it better be properly designed and maintained.

Standard procedures: Not working

Most wind turbines are maintained by a combination of traditional schedule-based preventive maintenance and threshold-based alarm systems. A problem with scheduled maintenance is that the standard six-month interval between inspections may be too long to detect an emerging problem. And fixed-threshold alerts, typically set by OEMs, activate too late to support proactive maintenance. That’s because the alerts are intended to protect equipment from catastrophic damage and can’t take into account a wide range of normal wind-turbine operating conditions and unit-to-unit manufacturing variances. As a result, typical fixed-threshold-alert systems do not detect problems until after a failure occurs.

Likewise, traditional condition-monitoring and predictive maintenance tools, such as vibration analysis, oil analysis, and thermography, are limited because of the difficulty in accessing the typical wind-turbine nacelle, the variable nature of the machine, and the time limitations and analytic capabilities of the technicians using them.

Ideally, equipment maintenance should only be performed when something needs fixing. Most preventive maintenance works on the idea of regularly inspecting or servicing equipment to address potential failures before they progress. However, given the huge variations in operating profile and environment, it’s easy to see that the regular, fixed inspection interval of traditional preventive maintenance may not catch critical emerging problems in the wind environment.

The conventional power industry, however, leads the industrial world in predicting impending equipment problems before they occur. And it is doing so using a technology directly applicable to the wind industry. In fact, several wind companies, Invenergy in Chicago for one, already use this technology to get early warnings, avoid surprises, and improve control of their operations. They reduce risk exposed by existing condition-monitoring tools and leverage SCADA data to remotely detect emerging problems by using predictive analytics.

Briefly, predictive analytics precisely identifies impending problems by detecting subtle changes in equipment operation. It finds problems earlier than OEMs’ alerting systems or other condition monitoring approaches, and well within traditional alarm limits.

A predictive analytics primer

It’s a real-time solution that works by analyzing SCADA data once every 5 to 10 minutes. Predictive analytics compares real-time data to software models of equipment when operating in good condition, and compensates for normal variations due to load and ambient conditions. Further, the method uses software models customized for individual pieces of equipment to provide the earliest possible warning of emerging problems. It readily integrates with an existing data infrastructure and it’s quick and easy to deploy, maintain, and use.

The method needs no new sensors and analysts need not review masses of SCADA data. Instead, the software analyzes data and alerts analysts only when it detects an exception, providing ample time to plan and respond. And, by using algorithms to identify pattern changes, the analysis is highly accurate.

For wind applications, the software uses models customized for each individual turbine, which compensates for fluctuations in wind speed, direction, and ambient conditions. In real time, the software compares data collected in the nacelle to the model–literally tens of thousands of data points every 5 to10 minutes across a fleet–and notifies maintenance and engineering of impending problems. Owners then focus on fixing problems early, before catastrophic damage occurs.

Take a gearbox for example. During the initial system configuration, a gearbox model would be “trained” using representative data provided from a data historian such as OSI PI (a data historian is a database for storing time-series data from instrumentation). Typically, one year of data would be used to train the model. In live operation, data from relevant sensors on the gearbox, such as for vibration and temperatures, along with operational state information, such as power output and ambient temperature, would be compared to the model. It would then provide an “estimate” of what each value should be, based on how it was trained from the historical data. If the actual value statistically differs from the model estimate, the system generates an alert. Technicians would review the sensors in alert and develop a preliminary diagnosis of the problem. A next step would typically be further on-machine investigation or use of other techniques, such as oil sampling.

Best practices

Given the high capital intensity of the wind-power business, reliable, long-term operation of the equipment is critical for generating positive returns and continued industry growth. It won’t take many major equipment failures before the long-term profitability of a farm is lost. As assets age, performing major work only when needed will be critical to maintaining economic viability.

Remote monitoring and condition-based maintenance approaches will be required to maintain financial returns because wind turbines are hard to access and don’t receive the same “walk-around” monitoring typical of industrial plants. Although wind has unique characteristics, wind turbines are just another kind of machine and successful operators will take advantage of best practices from other industries to outstrip their competition.