By implementing M.A.C Solutions’ ProcessVue alarm management and printer replacement software at Drax Power Station, Selby, North Yorkshire, engineers at Drax Power (‘Drax’) now have the ability to identify alarm trends more easily and quickly and to analyse the causes of plant upsets, should any occur, including the sequence of events (SOEs) leading up to a loss of production.
George Eccleston, lead control and instrumentation engineer at Drax states: “Introducing ProcessVue to the power station has been a gradual process over the last year or so. We have 11 SCADA systems across site. Six of these SCADA systems look after the six steam turbine generators, two are associated with water treatment and common site services, and the remaining three are within our materials handling processes. All of the SCADA systems provide plant operators with real time alarm handling capability. M.A.C Solutions has supported us every step of the way, adapting and tuning ProcessVue to exactly meet our bespoke requirements.”
Eccleston works in the Production Department at Drax, which includes 12 control and instrumentation engineers. He adds: “ProcessVue has been absolutely critical in helping us to quickly identify the sequence of events that lead up to a plant upset or loss of production. By adapting ProcessVue to our requirements, M.A.C Solutions has also helped to de-skill our alarm management processes so that our front-end users can access the information they require quickly and easily. ProcessVue has become indispensable to our operations.”
ProcessVue is a suite of software from M.A.C Solutions that provides clear, relevant and prioritised information to plant operators, supervisors and managers, enabling them to make better-informed decisions about their processes and plant safety. The software combines the latest communication, data logging and reporting technologies with more than 20 years’ experience in design and implementation of Alarm Management and Printer Replacement software. ProcessVue can be used as a standalone application or to bring together multiple disparate systems onto one common platform.
Like all products from M.A.C Solutions, ProcessVue is based on open technologies. The software uses the latest .net technology from Microsoft, ensuring compatibility with customers’ existing and future operating systems. ProcessVue uses the industry standard SQL database, TCP/IP system architecture and the latest Ajax ‘Zero Footprint’ web-based clients.
ProcessVue’s architecture is designed to enable interfacing with almost any control system, bringing all data into a standard configurable format. This allows simple Operator Sequence of Event [SOE] display and high level KPI reporting and analysis. These disparate systems might include SCADA systems, Distributed Control Systems, emergency shutdown, fire control, buildings management or any system that can output data in an ASCII format. With ProcessVue, all alarm sources are put into a standard, open format so that operators can view the KPIs without anyone having to write complex code.
ProcessVue at Drax Power
Drax Power Station runs on various DCS system (five different technologies) linked to eight separate SCADA systems, which handle all process data and more than 70,000 separate alarms. As George Eccleston states: “Prior to implementing ProcessVue, the alarms coming from our SCADA system were very detailed and did not offer a concise message to our process engineers. We therefore wanted software that would better manage the structure of the alarm message by parsing it and then sending the new, reconstructed message out to our SOE web clients [which were installed by M.A.C Solutions in January 2010].
“It is critical that our IT systems enable us to access process data and alarms quickly and easily. We have literally thousands of events each day that need to be recorded, as well as safety-critical processes that need monitoring and managing in terms of process alarms.
“ProcessVue is one of the key tools enabling root cause analysis of events at the power station, thereby helping us to investigate and report on these events to senior management and other parts of our organisation.”
“Phase One implementation of Alarm Management at Drax was all about moving towards a paperless system by installing printer replacement software, which we did with M.A.C Solutions’ help. Phase Two focused on retrieving the data, receiving the alarms and recording this information on a PC-based system. Phase Three is where we are now, with the ability to recognise different types of alarm messages and to sort these into a database using standard Microsoft SQL tools. What comes next is moving towards automating these reports and analysing the data.”
In May 2011, M.A.C Solutions began implementing the ProcessVue Analyser software module at Drax. ProcessVue Analyser is a business intelligence software module, which offers a wide range of high level reporting features, including event reporting, frequency analysis, standing and chattering alarm reporting, operator response times, and customised reporting. The Analyser Web Client enables the presentation of EEMUA alarm-based KPIs through dashboards.
