Foundation Letter

OPC: A Set of Solutions for Today's Challenges

Thomas Burke, president and executive director of the OPC Foundation, outlines how OPC technology has evolved to meet current manufacturing challenges, and how you can benefit.

Welcome to the March 2010 edition of OPConnect, the official newsletter of the OPC Foundation. It's the first year of a new decade (some would say good riddance to the old) and 2010 is already promising to be a great year for OPC technology developments.

The global economic downturn has challenged manufacturers to look for new opportunities to maximize return on investment. Whether you're an end-user of technology or a technology solutions supplier, your 2010 objectives are sure to include finding ways to improve efficiency of operations, cut costs, and enhance overall productivity. Well, the OPC Foundation has a solution for you... Read more

CASE APPLICATION

New Bleach Plants Rely on Historian OPC Technology

A manufacturer of bleach generating systems selects the OPC Historian solution from Canary Labs to manage and access equipment warranty data remotely and support operational troubleshooting.

Canary Labs has been selected by Electrolytic Technologies Corporation as the historian provider for a series of bleach production facilities, with the first one in central New York State. Electrolytic Technologies Corporation is a technology, engineering, design and manufacturing company specializing in onsite chlorine gas and 12.5% sodium hypochlorite (bleach) generators. This unique technology is offered to customers in the form of fully engineered systems that are factory tested and ready for installation and commissioning. The customers served by Electrolytic Technologies are typically in the water, wastewater, pulp/paper, industrial and power generation industries.

The company's patented Klorigen™ product, with its “inherently safe design” and advanced electrochemical process technology is designed to deliver products that can solve critical environmental and safety-of-life problems at the point-of-use, with increased efficacy, while significantly reducing the costs and risks of transporting hazardous chemicals through the communities that need to be protected... Read more

CASE APPLICATION

Integrating Access Security and Building Management

A team of building specialists on a Dubai project implemented an access security and energy management system that uses the OPC DataHub, from Cogent Real-Time Systems, to abstract and convert data from an OPC to a DDE client.

Schneider Electric specializes in energy management, with products and solutions to help consumers and companies get the most for their energy dollar. In a prestigious Dubai project recently, Schneider Electric FZE engineers selected the OPC DataHub, from Cogent Real-Time Systems Inc., to integrate a building's security system with its energy management system and provide state-of-the-art energy efficiency at substantial cost savings.

To implement the project, Schneider Electric's BAS Field Supervisor, Pradeep Viswanathan, and BAS Application Specialist, Duncan McChlery, worked closely with Boyce Baine, Technical Support Engineer at Software Toolbox, Cogent's sales and technical partner for North America, as well as Koshy Thomas, Project Manager at Al Hani Gulf Contracting. Together they implemented a solution in which the OPC DataHub relays information from a Lenel OnGuard security system to Schneider Electric's TAC Satchwell Sigma building management system... Read more

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Monitoring with SCADA

A large water company with hundreds of remote sites spread across 200 square miles uses the Kepware iSNMP (Industrial SNMP) product to import device files and access information for continuous monitoring and data management.

When your business covers hundreds of square miles, the health of your infrastructure becomes very important, as in this example of a typical, large water company, serving the water and wastewater needs of over 300,000 people. On an annual basis, the company manages over 94,000 Acre Feet of water, enough to cover their entire territory under almost ten inches of water.

The system relies on automation spread out over hundreds of remote sites, from sewage lift stations to 1000-ft. or more deep fresh water wells. This part of the country is far from flat, and the distribution of remote sites requires a vast network of fiber optics, wire and radio technology. It is an impressive feat of engineering, and keeping it running efficiently and reliably is the job of automation engineers who rely on a collection of controls, infrastructure components and SCADA technology, all working in harmony day in and day out. When there is a problem, it needs to be diagnosed quickly, to keep the system in balance and to avoid any disruption of service to customers. That is where SNMP comes in. .. Read more

OPC Events

**This is a sponsored newsletter from OPC. All the content was provided directly by the participating companies and was not handled by the Automation World editorial staff. Each story link, including those in the main body of the newsletter, is sponsored by the different companies. Please be sure to review our privacy policy with regard to sponsored links.