POWER May 2016 - 52

INSTRUMENTATION & CONTROLS
end of this year. " If the open approach proves
out with ExxonMobil, " It absolutely could
work in power as well. "
" The one issue, " he added, concerns cybersecurity.
" First and foremost, whatever
system we develop has to be safe and secure. "
The more devices you connect, the more data
you have. Schneider's view is that you'd keep
control system data internally within a facility,
and it will never go outside. But as you
have more data and the ability to do analytics,
there will be more options for where to
move and handle the data.
He noted that the Lockheed Martin announcement
highlights the fact that one goal
is to make the system itself more secure. One
school of thought says you can secure the
system at the device and software levels. Another
says you're also opening your system
up to more opportunities for unauthorized
connection and cybersecurity concerns as the
number of connection points increase.
An alternative to an open ecosystem, Freburger
suggested, is to " future-proof " a system,
as he said Schneider Electric is alone in doing
with its system (formerly known as Invensys
before its acquisition by Schneider Electric).
Schneider Electric guarantees customers that
when they install a new system, they will always
have an upgrade path so they won't have
to " rip and replace " as systems become obsolete.
The company also ensures that the new
product will work with the old product.
Emerson Process Management
When I asked Emerson Process Management
President Robert L. Yeager about the
ExxonMobil-Lockheed Martin initiative, he
responded, " I think it's complicated, and there
are some things that are very, very difficult
and very hard. Having the I/O [input/output]
be kind of independent and having some kind
of standard interface to it, like you would have
some kind of protocol that every vendor could
interface every other vendor's I/O-you can
do that. The issue is how fast can you do it,
because if you're in a power plant, especially
if you're doing turbine control, you're doing
a closed-loop, real-time, high-speed control.
It's not the controller that's the limiting factor,
it's the bandwidth or cycle time of the I/O. So,
you have to be careful there, but you can do
that. . . . We could have our I/O interface to
Honeywell's. "
The real concern, he continued, is of a different
nature. " One of the things [ExxonMobil
and Lockheed Martin] want to do is run
software, like off-the-shelf software-even
write their own software at the controller
level. Everyone's controller right now runs
sometimes 5- to 10-millisecond loops, right?
Very high speed. It's very robust, it's been
vetted out for many years, the software's very
52
mature at the controller level. If you just kind
of let people throw third-party software in at
that level, it creates a lot of problems, because
if it's instable, it hasn't been tested thoroughly,
and you're running that at 10-millisecond
loop times, and it crashes, guess what's going
to happen? The turbine or the combustion
process the controller is [running]-even if
they're redundant-they trip, the plant trips.
You've got to be very careful, and it's not just
power, it's everything. "
There are some advancements in operating
system technology, he continued, " where
something called page faults " can " kind of
isolate certain programs to run at a certain
boundary condition. If they crash, they crash
within that page fault. They're not going to
go and corrupt the rest of the controller, but
it's still risky. So once you try to get to that
level, it becomes very difficult to have multiple
vendors putting software in other people's
high-speed controllers. "
At that point, I said, " The bottom line
here sounds like you're not real keen on the
idea. "
Yeager responded, " No. Look, we're not
really for or against it, because the market determines
what it is. We think for example-
we have CHARMs I/O, which is great I/O,
and it's this channel-per-channel I/O (Figure
3). It's great because you can wait until
the last minute to change the database. You
might have even heard about this before, but
it's a huge advantage for Emerson and for
customers. That might be something where
you could open that up as a standard, and it
would work with any control system. I think
Exxon would love that. The industry would
love that. "
At that point, Alan J. Novak, director, mining
and power industries, added, " ExxonMobil's
got some really smart people. Lockheed
Martin obviously has some really smart
people. But there are some unique features in
each of the industries we deal with, so we see
things in power we don't see in oil and gas.
The risk is when you have an ExxonMobil
designing it, it's probably going to be very
specific to [their type of business]. You really
have to look at the applicability across
industries, because I think it would be very
difficult to build a truly generic " system.
Yeager agreed, noting that there are elements
specific to the power industry like
" valve positioning, speed center, high-speed
turbine logic-that kind of thing would all
have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis,
but we're not for or against it. We've just got
to understand it. "
ABB
Dr. Bernhard Eschermann, head of technology
for ABB Process Automation Division in
www.powermag.com
Zurich, responded to POWER's questions via
email. His comments have been edited for
length and style.
How does your company feel about
this open controls system concept for
power generation and why? ExxonMobil's
concept is in line with the natural
evolution that has been taking place in control
system architecture over the past two
decades-more open, more standards, more
interoperability.
DCS systems have evolved, becoming less
monolithic and getting more open/standard
interfaces for some time already, also in the
power generation market. An example of a
standard, open architecture is IEC 61850,
which is widely used for the integration of
electrical devices from different vendors and
the standardization of how distributed automation
functions need to work together.
The evolution has different speeds in different
application areas, but it will continue
for power generation as well.
ABB has been a technology leader in
this area while continuing to preserve our
customer's investments in their intellectual
property (control applications) through our
evolution without obsolescence commitment
(for example, Symphony Plus, see Figure 4).
What might that mean for how you do
business? Open systems combining " best of
breed " components for critical installations
like power plants require coupling strong
system integration skills with rich, specific
domain expertise to assure functionality, reliability,
and quality. ABB also has rich experience
in evolving DCS installations in line
with what the latest technology affords and
will continue to put that experience to use in
POWER | May 2016
3. Works like a CHARM. Emerson
Process Management says its CHARacterization
module (CHARM) could potentially
be opened up as an industry standard. The
company's website says the DeltaV system's
Electronic Marshalling, shown here, enables
the ability to add I/O anywhere in the plant
without affecting control room cabinets.
Courtesy: Emerson Process Management
http://www.powermag.com
POWER May 2016

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