Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition

Petrofac Training is launching the UK’s first pipeline training facility.

To be launched this autumn at the company’s training centre in Montrose, the pipeline facility will enable Petrofac Training to simulate pipeline operations process on actual facilities for the purposes of training and competence development, without any of the risk associated with live operations.

The facility, which will also be used for research and testing purposes, can be used to train both on and offshore personnel and consists of a 1km, 10” diameter pipeline constructed in a loop formation. When complete, it will also feature the latest supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) technology, enabling multiple scenario simulations to be programmed during training.

Source and more info: oilonline

UTSI International Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Diverse Networks, Inc. and The Jackson Rivers Company, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: JKRI - News) announced today that it has been awarded three (3) separate contracts from Shell Pipeline Company LP (SPLC) to provide application porting services for specialized software related to support of SPLC’s Pipeline Operations Control Center located in Houston, Texas.

Two of these contracts involve conversion and/or migration of portions of SPLC’s Operational and SCADA Interface System (OPSIS) from a Sybase PowerBuilder environment to Microsoft’s VB.Net based applications. The third contract concerns conversion of a specialized software application, used to support critical aspects of maintaining the SCADA system, from a legacy platform to a PC-Windows operating environment.

“We are very excited about this work as it allows us to leverage our prior experience and knowledge of these legacy applications, as well as, apply our expertise with Microsoft.net technologies. This work involves several of UTSI’s core competencies in the areas of software maintenance, support, and development, and we are pleased to have the opportunity to assist SPLC with these activities,” states Daniel Nagala, President of UTSI International Corporation.

Mr. Robert Bliss, SPLC’s Control Center Development Supervisor stated “We have a very long standing relationship with UTSI, and we are very pleased to have them perform this work for us. These projects, along with several other parallel efforts, are key components in SPLC’s ongoing program to continuously improve and enhance the tools and technologies used within our pipeline control center and by our corresponding support personnel.”

Source and more info: yahoo

Williams Power has selected Invensys to implement an InFusion-based Generation Management System (GMS) for its fleet of electrical generation assets. These assets include two company-owned power plants and six contracted facilities located across seven states.

The new system will integrate data from many different automation systems and applications to help Williams precisely schedule the delivery of generation capacity from each plant according to changing demand from contracted markets.

The GMS will monitor demand trend data by communicating with the three contracted ISO (Independent System Transmission Operator) organizations that serve California (CAISO), the Midwest (MISO) and Mid-Atlantic states (PJM). In the competitive deregulated generation market, the ISOs are responsible for monitoring and directing the flow of wholesale electric power into and throughout the distribution grids that serve their regional markets.

Having all plant data and market demand data in a centralized business decision support environment will allow Williams to provide set point dispatch control for production from the generating plants on an hourly basis. This real time scheduling will help prevent shortfalls in capacity, as well as the generation of too much electricity, minimizing economic risk in the business and optimizing the production value of each Williams generation asset.

The new system will be engineered using new modular power industry applications created in the InFusion Engineering Environment. This will allow these applications to be deployed on different automation systems across the Williams generation fleet.

InFusion Access and Historian will collect and model data from a variety of device types at the eight power plants, constantly comparing the production data in real time with customer demand trend data from the ISOs throughout each day. The InFusion View graphical user interface and SuiteVoyager for InFusion Web portal will provide a local human machine interface (HMI) for operator visualization and provide authorized managers with secure remote access to GMS information.

Invensys will implement the Williams GMS connection to the regional ISOs using a LiveData server using ICCP (Inter-Control Center Protocol), which enables real-time bi-directional flow of remote data across multiple protocols.

The Invensys Generation Management System replaces an existing SCADA system. The new Infusion-based system will provide Williams Power with a more flexible, easier-to-deploy, standards-based data acquisition and business decision support platform that will be able to adapt to future changes in asset configuration and energy market characteristics.

The Invensys GMS implementation builds on more than a dozen years of prior Invensys experience with units of the Williams Companies. Williams has Foxboro I/A Series automation systems installed at seven gas processing sites.

Source and more information: ballard

Cognex Corporation , the world’s leading supplier of machine vision sensors, has introduced the DVTâ 515 and DVT 535, the most affordable, capable and easy-to-use vision sensors in their class.

With the most complete suite of vision tools at their price point, the DVT 515 and 535 set a new cost/performance standard for entry-level vision sensors.

Kris Nelson, Cognex Senior Vice President of Vision Sensors, says that the DVT 515 and 535 are not limited to a single or even a few generic machine vision functions, but handle a much broader range of applications than similarly-priced vision sensors.

Kris believes it’s also very easy for users to combine vision tools to inspect, measure, count, find features and compare patterns in order to automate inspection and ensure quality in a variety of applications and industries.

The DVT 515 and 535 are the lowest cost models in the DVT vision sensor family which includes a choice of products to meet a range of performance requirements-from simple part inspection to defect detection, high-resolution and color applications.

Like all DVT vision sensors, these new models operate with easy-to-use Intellect software that facilitates setup, integration and maintenance, and are backward compatible with FrameWork.

Source and more information: ferret

Two Vietnam has successfully manufactured a supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA) with automatic warning equipment serving the mining industry, said the Ministry of Science and Technology on June 28.

The ministry added that Japan has proposed cooperation with Vietnam in mass-producing the system for the local mining industry as well as for exports to foreign markets.

SCADA is one of nearly 300 automatic products successfully manufactured by Vietnam over the past five years, earning the country 1 trillion VND (roughly 62.5 million USD).