Badger Midstream’s Grey Badger site in Panhandle, Texas is a cryogenic gas processing and treatment plant. The company sought an HMI/SCADA solution to control all the processes of the Grey Badger gas plant including plant metering, compression monitoring, tank/pump/valve control, and the monitoring and control of 105 proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control loops. The new solution would replace an existing system based on a combination of two competitor products due to lack of support of their installed product versions and comparatively high costs of upgrades and yearly/ ongoing maintenance charges. Understandably, Badger wanted their new solution to be more cost-effective and easier to maintain. The selected HMI/SCADA would need to integrate with the plant’s DeltaV DCS control, Allen Bradley controllers, Emerson OPC Server, and various electronic flow meter (EFM) remote terminal units (RTUs), as well as with various plant equipment including heaters, dehydrators, vapor recovery units, separators, heat exchanges and more.

Ameren, Missouri’s largest electric utility, was in need of a replacement for a legacy solution that was no longer supported after the year 2000. The company required a system that could provide remote access to inline chemistry analyzer readings, both numerical output and trend graphs, and alarm conditions. The new system also needed to be accessible from a single web page, removing the database from the plant mainframe and allowing access to live chemistry data to all plant personnel. Prior to this, live chemistry data was only accessible on a few PCs that had the legacy software installed.

The Ceramic Factory - Botevgrad has experienced recent growth as the construction industry continues to grow in Bulgaria. The company required visualization of the manufacturing processes involving its furnaces as well as of the transportation line for the produced bricks. The factory also sought an additional module for reports to help management mitigate downtime issues and increase productivity. The company realized that as business grew, it would require premium, robust solutions to meet its visualization, control and reporting needs. The selected solution would need to integrate with the company’s existing VIPA PLCs, approximately 150 I/O points and KEP OPC Server for Siemens PLCs. In addition, The Ceramic Factory – Botevgrad sought HMI/SCADA and reporting solutions that would also work with its Microsoft Access database and its desktops and servers running Microsoft Windows XP Professional.

Arvin-Edison Water Storage District, located south of Bakersfield, CA, is a sophisticated conjunctive use program that acquires water in wet years and stores it underground for use in dry years. This program provides water supplies to District areas covering 132,000 acres of prime agricultural land, which do not have access to surface water. The district uses ICONICS GENESIS32 for monitoring water levels and motors that pump water to upstream sites, as well as for remote turn on/off of pump motors in emergency situations. The district utilizes 46 pumping plants plus 10 plants that supply water level indicators only to the organization’s headquarters. The plants are controlled by local programming at the sites themselves through Westinghouse PC1100/ PC1200 in older systems or SCADAPacks in newer systems.

Bohr Instrument Services needed a system to monitor and control all the operations of drilling rigs for oil and gas producing companies. The system needed to collect data in real time and monitor all the extreme forces on a drill bit while providing the drilling operator with multiple graphical data monitors. The system also needed to communicate this data to two locations; the drill floor and remote offices. The many parameters that needed to be logged and converted into other parameters demanded a software system that could process an unlimited amount of real-time data from a variety of inputs.

Brézillon was tasked with the design and construction of a building compatible with the ideas of the Grenelle de l’environnement, a French consortium of government, labor, industry and other related organizations with the goal of improving ecology, energy, sustainable development and territorial planning. An edict for the building was that it must be built with respect for environmental quality and safety, with the means to monitor and regulate facilities automatically in order to reduce energy costs. The construction company, working with CR System and BETHIC, had a development time of 14 months, including finalizing electric work and an automated HVAC system. The selected building automation control was meant to tie into multiple procedures and equipment.

CIAT, a leading producer of air conditioning, refrigeration, and heating units, was looking for a 64-bit monitoring system that aligned with their values for innovation and sustainability. They wanted a system that could unify and standardize communications with all their equipment, including meters and compressors, without breaking existing connections. The company was also keen on finding a solution that could integrate information from a broad range of equipment and systems used. CIAT's development strategy was centered around optimizing energy consumption, improving air quality, and ensuring a comfortable atmosphere inside buildings, while providing the best support available to clients.

The City of Cumberland, Maryland, needed a system to visualize information of remote pumping stations, elevated tanks, and reservoir levels for the Water Filtration Plant. They also needed to visualize and report information about Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) events, which are important to the Wastewater Treatment Plant and the surrounding watershed authorities. When it rains, or when snow melts, there exists potentials for CSO events. Once manual and highly labor-intensive, these events are now tracked in real time and reported on as soon as the event has ended.

The City of Enid’s Water Production department sought to upgrade its control system. Originally consisting of push-button controls, it evolved from an older simple one-line diagram type to ActiveX-based controls. The city considered multiple solutions, including those from several competitors, then decided upon ICONICS GENESIS32™ HMI/SCADA suite and have recently upgraded to GENESIS64. The department’s new system handles over 1,400 tags in its Water Production system, which now integrates with their Koyo PLCs. The ICONICS software also ties into additional hardware including wireless, serial and networking connections (e.g. UHF, VHF and FSK [Frequency Shift Key]).

Ford Motor Company contracted with Comau Pico to design and install multiple cold and hot test stands at the Dearborn Engine plant. The requirement was to perform 100 percent testing of every engine produced at this plant (4 & 6 cylinder engines) along with the logging and trending of results for both cold and hot testing. Cold testing does not use gasoline and the engine is basically driven by an external motor. All fluids are installed and the engine is run through its cycles. Hot testing involves adding gasoline and actually starting and running the engine through various test cycles. The test stands perform measurements on the heating and cooling of fluids as well as exhaust gases, spark timing and advancement through the RPM range. Testing is also done on the air combustion mixture of exhaust gases and fuel mixtures of the injection systems.

Cyberlogic Technologies, Inc. is a leading independent supplier of industrial communication drivers and servers. They have introduced many firsts, including the first 32-bit communication drivers for Windows platforms, first virtual drivers to migrate legacy applications to 32-bit operating systems and the first remote drivers to enable access to industrial networks from plant networks. A recent deployment was for a large soft drink bottling company that needed traceability to track the ingredients to the original source. From a code stamped on the outside of the bottle one can quickly trace what batch of syrup was used and where the cap, bottle, and water came from. A report can then be generated that shows where other finished products that contain any of the source ingredients were shipped.

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), formerly The Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills (BIS) is the department for business, science, and innovation within the UK Government. The Department’s holistic aim was to rationalise their building portfolio and shrink their carbon footprint by reducing the number of buildings they own and introducing more flexible work hours for their staff. But, in order to have any chance of shrinking their footprint, BIS realised that they needed to be able to analyse the performance of their estate, detect trends and use data to drive proactive estate management. The challenge was that the data and reporting processes for their entire building portfolio was completely fragmented. BIS did make sure to monitor the performance of their buildings. However, their manual data collection processes were so complex that they didn’t have the time or resources to digest the data and act accordingly.

Dynastar aimed to update the automation capabilities of its Sallanches location, a 28,000 square-meter facility producing over 300,000 skis per year. Its objectives for this project was to reduce energy consumption related to its manufacturing process, as well as implement a global visualization interface. The company wanted a system that could rationalize the use of production equipment as well as provide warnings of hardware failure. At the time, the company was running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with multiple Web clients, as well as SQL Server, in addition to Excel, for its database needs. Its existing manufacturing system was comprised of TREND and Honeywell devices, in addition to hundreds of other tags, all of which required an easily integrated automation solution. The French ski manufacturer required a supervisory product that could allow product managers to set, view and make use of real-time availability requirements of workshops and equipment.

E.ON Trend s.r.o., a subsidiary of the global power and gas company E.ON, is responsible for electricity generation and heat production and distribution mainly for households in the Czech Republic. The company operates six hydro-powered electrical plants with a total output of 30 MW. These plants are monitored and controlled by a central control station located up to 100km away. E.ON was looking for a solution to replace the Promotic Microsys system, with requirements for data redundancy, real-time alarm notification, and superior graphics. They needed to centrally monitor and control their remote hydro power plants and bring all power generation together.

ENSTOR, a subsidiary of Iberdrola Renewables, is a company dedicated to the storage of liquid natural gas. With facilities including both depleted reservoirs and salt caverns, ENSTOR maintains five repositories throughout North America, and is currently developing two more sites. The company leverages its various gas storage and hub service facilities to provide customers superior transfer access between major pipelines as well as rapid injection and withdrawal storage capacity. In ENSTOR’s facilities, the control system uses PLCs and gas flow computers that monitor and control a variety of compressors, gas meters, valves, dehydrators, and safety equipment to manage natural gas injection, withdrawal, receipt and delivery. Each location has a dedicated control room where operators monitor and control both storage plant and pipeline interconnection points.

Microgy, a subsidiary of Environmental Power Corporation, develops facilities to efficiently and reliably produce clean, renewable gas from agriculture and food industry wastes. The company uses anaerobic digestion, where methane-rich biogas is extracted from waste to produce electric power, helping farms and businesses responsibly manage the wastes they generate. The company operates in four renewable energy facilities across the United States' Western and Midwestern regions. The challenge was to monitor and control systems at these facilities, provide real-time monitoring and control, and convey data from remote locations to a corporate location in Tarrytown, New York.

The Federation Tower in Moscow, Russia is set to become the tallest building in Europe, and Europe’s first “Supertall” building. The complex is divided into two towers with a shared podium with a combined floor area of 423,000 square meters. The building automation and security systems in the West Tower are being handled by the ARMO Group, a building systems, automation, and management firm also located in Moscow. Construction on the Federation Tower began in 2005 and will be complete in 2013. ARMO Group is assisting with the JCI Energy Smart Buildings and automation network in the West Tower, handling over 21,000 data points spread amongst 1,600 automated devices and using more than 20 digital integrations.

FuelCell Energy, a world leader in the development and manufacturing of high temperature hydrogen fuel cells for ultra-clean electric power generation, required a robust, secure Human Machine Interface (HMI) to monitor and allow remote control of the company’s power plants as standalone systems. They initially worked with a system integrator partner, then customized their resulting solution before finalizing project development on their own. The company needed a system that could provide alarm management and online functionality, allowing operators to be alerted during alarm/event conditions for immediate acknowledgement and action. The system also needed to be web-enabled for ease of use and remote monitoring/control throughout the company.

The large-scale Russian energy provider has had basic direct digital control (DDC) for many years. Working with its system integrator, RVS, the firm initiated a major optimization effort, with a preference towards utilizing the latest software technology while simultaneously ensuring integration with a wide variety of data sources. The firm sought a solution that could handle the data from four thermal power plant (TPP) production branches (each with approximately 5,000 I/O points) as well as from its executive office. An additional major need of the plant was to provide a uniform, insightful user interface to all operations and levels of management. The company required dashboards that could provide needed insight in order to drive immediate improvement actions. The site also sought a major upgrade in its reporting capabilities. Prior to considering this upgrade, a legacy data historian from OSI PI provided limited visualization and report capability, but could not provide the depth of information available.

The Vessel Traffic Centre of Hong Kong Marine Department monitors and regulates all ship movements within Hong Kong waters. Over one thousand big and small ships enter into or sail from the port of Hong Kong daily. The volume of traffic that transits Hong Kong waters to and from the ports at the Pearl River Delta increases annually. At any one time, there are over three hundred ships moored within the harbor. The Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, which is also under Hong Kong Marine Department, is responsible for coordinating all search and rescue operations within the Hong Kong maritime rescue responsible area, which is about the entire northern part of the South China Sea, up to the west coast of the Philippines on the east and up to the 10 degree Latitude on the south. The traffic monitoring equipment and the telecommunications equipment of both centers have recently been upgraded.

Hyderabad, the capital city of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, is a rapidly growing urban area with a semi-arid climate and a rainfall of 75 cms. The city faces a premium on water during the hot dry months, with a respite from the heat and relative water scarcity coming during the monsoon season, which typically lasts from late June to early October. The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply & Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) has been tasked with ensuring a reliable source of water and waste treatment for its citizens. The board is also involved in other water-related projects including rainwater harvesting and water bottling/canning. The board sought assistance in automating its water supply/sewer facilities and contacted Nish Automation who, in turn, recommended ICONICS’ industrial automation software solutions, specifically the company’s GENESIS64 suite that integrates with new 64-bit computing machinery and the latest operating systems from Microsoft (including Windows Vista® and Windows Server® 2008).

Hydrovision Ltd., a leading manufacturer of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), required a new scalable control system for their ROVs, sub-sea tooling, and other custom tooling applications. The specifications demanded a PC-based system running under a Windows operating system and meeting open standards like OPC. The system needed to be scalable, maintainable, easy to modify after implementation, and economical. The company also wanted a system that would allow their customers to make their own modifications to the machines for different tooling or use applications.

The Manx Electricity Authority (MEA) in the United Kingdom was facing a challenge with the proliferation of different SCADA systems. Each system operated uniquely, making it time-consuming and costly to train operators and keep them updated on system changes. The MEA was responsible for the generation of electricity across the Isle of Man and ensuring the full commercial potential of the UK-IOM subsea power cable. The MEA decided to look for an integrated enterprise-level SCADA solution to streamline their efforts. They wanted a solution that could integrate their entire key infrastructure across multiple sites, allow easy expansion for future capacity, and provide a seamless switchover with parallel running capability of the old SCADA applications as a backup.

SEA, the company that manages both the Malpensa and Linate airports in Italy, required an HMI/SCADA solution for an in-house data trending application to assist operators with determining the number of baggages processed in defined intervals. The involved system consists of two hot backup servers and 11 clients, used for monitoring the state of the HBS and EBS systems. One server runs ICONICS AlarmWorX™32 (with alarm logger), ScriptWorX™32 and DataWorX™32. Both servers handle client security (aligned between the two servers by means of a script) and can switch automatically if a failure is detected on the primary, or on demand by an operator.

Loudoun Water, a utility company in Virginia, was seeking ways to improve its industrial processes. It determined that high-performance 64-bit computers and applications, including a feature-rich, easier-to-use, 64-bit version of its ICONICS software, GENESIS64™, would increase efficiency. However, the utility would need a newer operating system to support the upgrade. The utility’s HMI/SCADA system was based primarily on GENESIS32™ by ICONICS, installed in an environment with 15 client computers running the Windows XP operating system connected to servers running the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 data management software supports the HMI/SCADA applications by supplying them with information gathered in real time from the utility’s industrial environment.

A Large International Integrated Energy Company (LIIEC) with over $100 billion in annual revenue is a global energy enterprise developing vital energy resources in over 180 countries around the world and is a world leader in oil exploration and production. The USA-located, ICONICS-managed oil field has in excess of 3,000 drilling wells that are using WebHMI™ software to monitor oil well performance, production analysis and maintenance operations. The challenge was to deliver data from any LIIEC Business Unit facility in the entire Western US area to any user anywhere within the LIIEC Intranet. In the West Coast Business Unit, there is a total of six major oil fields with numerous facilities controlled by Modicon and A-B PLCs.

The Kista Science Tower complex, located in one of the most dynamic IT regions in the world, was faced with the challenge of having an open infrastructure where all monitoring and control could be looked at as a single system. The complex houses several high-profile tenants and spans six buildings, with the tallest spanning 32 stories. The challenge was to ensure that all systems and controllers had a common platform for communication. This included the KONE elevators, lighting, HVAC, and the windows blinds for the Kista Science Tower. The complex also needed a system that could connect to any OPC server throughout the Kista Science Tower, including communication to the KONE OPC-DA server running on Linux.

Keokuk Municipal Water Works, serving over 4,800 customers, is responsible for providing its residential, commercial, and industrial customers with a high-quality and reliable water supply. The Water Works service area, 105 miles of pipe within a 20-square-mile area, includes the entire incorporated area of the city of Keokuk, Iowa. Additionally, the water system serves two small private water systems outside the Keokuk corporate limits. The challenge was to monitor all functions of the plant, from analytical equipment to Rotork Valve: control, monitor, alarm, trend, etc. The system needed to connect to an Allen-Bradley Series 5 and MicroLogiX PLCs, Prolinx Hart Multiplexer, Rotork Valve System, Hach Analytical Equipment, Toshiba Drive Systems, and Rosemount Field Devices.

The new Kazan Metro required a unified control and visualization system for its operation. The objectives for this solution were the management and security of integrated systems including Train Dispatch and Control, Antiterrorist Protection, Power Systems/Uninterrupted Power Supplies, Fire Safety, Groundwater Pumping and Tunnel Monitoring. Challenges facing Kazan Metro developers included cost-control, adaptability/expandability, and communications/data management reliability.

The International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) in Braga, Portugal, required a comprehensive, state-of-the-art HMI/SCADA system to handle its building management. The complex is divided into a hotel for resident researchers and the main building, where clean rooms, laboratories, high accuracy areas and administrative offices are located. The application involved deploying an ICONICS integrated Building Management System, paying special attention to the clean room and high accuracy and laboratory areas, as well as to the critical process systems. Critical areas such as clean rooms and high accuracy labs don’t allow any downtime for the HVAC system, because most of the experiments carried out in these zones are expensive and take a long time. Should any failure occur while an experiment is being carried out, it would have to be started from the beginning, implying additional and unacceptable costs. On the other hand, the HVAC system for these areas was designed to work 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. In addition to the temperature, humidity and pressure data monitoring and collection for the certification of the clean rooms, it was an additional challenge to control the temperature in the high accuracy rooms with a required accuracy of ±0.1ºC.