“InTouch HMI won us over with its state-of-the-art truly realistic graphics that are more attractive to operators and easier to use too, than the conventional imaging used by the other supervision software that we were offered in response to our request for proposals.”

Rodolphe PetitHead of Operations, SUC

ArchestrA System Platform helps run the Air Conditioning System’s Chilled Water Production at Dalkia

Goals• Create a solution that will supervise the chilled

water production installation used to provide air conditioning for part of the prime Paris-La Défense business district

• Providing easy to use block diagrams as the installation welcomes many non technical visitors. This is a showcase for Dalkia, for future national and international customers

• Using open software that is independent of the proprietary standards used by PLC vendors (the installation comprises PLCs from a variety of vendors)

• Efficiently archiving and using all of the process data in a centralized way

Challenges• Changing supervision software vendors without

excessively upsetting operator’s routines and the actual production

• Encouraging operation, especially by implementing a large screen with summary and intuitive graphic presentations for users who are not technical experts

Solutions and Products• ArchestrA® System Platform• Wonderware® InTouch® HMI

Results• A user-friendly application was created

where operators work with very easy to use block diagrams that make decision making easier

• A 50-inch screen offers an overall view of the installation with state of the art 3D graphics provided by the integrator partner (BASIS) using Wonderware tools

• A user-friendly application• Improved control over operations

leading to increased production equipment availability and significant savings in the use of various energies

INDUSTRY: POWER

UC/DALKIAwww.dalkia.com

Paris, France — We hope for great weather! This hope is one that everyone has at the beginning of the summer, with the upcoming prospect of festivities or recreational pastimes and this is a hope shared by SUC , aka Société Urbaine de Climatisation (French for The Urban Air Conditioning Company, a subsidiary of International Group Dalkia). Only here, it is a business-related one. SUC supplies the chilled water used by the air conditioning systems in some of the buildings at Paris — La Défense, Europe’s largest business district. More specifically, SUC is a public utility with a concession from the Défense region urban heating syndicate (Syndicat mixte de Chauffage Urbain de la région de la Défense or SICUDEF) for the production and distribution of cooling in the towns of Courbevoie and Puteaux, along the Seine River.

This chilled water supply is used to avoid the need for any unsightly, voluminous, noisy and polluting conventional air conditioners, whether they are individual units on the front of buildings or collective ones on roofs (with multiple cooling towers). The chilled water supplied by the SUC “production” facility feeds a fully insulated 10 km network that runs from building to building, cooling 1.5 million square meters of office space. The water circulates in a closed circuit, leaving SUC’s refrigeration units at 4.5°C and returning, after absorbing heat from the buildings, at 14.5°C. The SUC cooling facility has a production capacity of 76.5 MW. Despite the size of the equipment used, the facility is a discrete one, located in a plain building, one that is soundproofed and well integrated into the urban landscape. In its principle, the way it works is similar to that of a household refrigerator. One original aspect of the installation’s operation is that the condenser circuit is cooled by water pumped from (and then returned to) the Seine River thanks to two major pumping stations, each with a capacity of 12.000 cu. meters per hour.

From Conventional Supervision to “New Generation” Supervision

SUC’s installations trace their origins back to 1972. Naturally the equipment used has evolved over time. The command and control system, based on the use of PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) was recently renovated. The approach adopted up until then was not impacted, but latest generation PLCs were installed, communicating via Ethernet over a fiber optic loop so as to exchange data with the control room. For the control room, the specification requirements could be met by a wide range of off the shelf supervision programs: SUC was especially looking for a system that would run on redundant servers with reliable data archival functions, but which was open to industry standards (as the installation comprises PLCs from a variety of vendors). “From a functional point of view, most of the software that we were offered met our needs. InTouch from Wonderware won us over with its state of the art truly realistic graphics that are more attractive and easier to use too, than the conventional imaging used by the other supervision software that we were offered in response to our request for proposals”, comments Rodolphe Petit, Head of Operations at SUC. For sure, we don’t often here this from industrial clients! The decision reached by SUC no doubt reflects a change in mindset. Those who lived through the early days of off the shelf supervision applications remember that back then, vendors stressed the appearance of the diagrams with the ability to show objects with rounded edges, shading effects and displays offering thousands of colors. Industrial clients often had reservations regarding these aspects, considering them to be gadgets. Consequently, at most industrial facilities, supervision images are rather boring. This lack of ambition by industrial clients doubtless somewhat discouraged supervision software vendors who put

Control station & 50-inch display

the accent on developing new functions, often at the expense of improved imaging. In this field however, Wonderware did not give up, quite the reverse, with the ArchestrA graphic symbols available with version 10.0.

This aspect was a decisive one for SUC who preferred to select InTouch rather than the latest iteration of the application already installed on-site!

The SUC supervision application covers over 8,000 variables and more than 100 diagram screens.

A Showcase Application for DALKIA

The change did not call for any in depth rethink for SUC as it has always contracted out the development of its applications. Furthermore, the was a smooth one as the software was first deployed at the new pumping installation, before being rolled out across the entire facility. SUC control room technicians were already used to working with one dimensional block diagram displays, and they were quite happy with them too. In the application deployed with InTouch, main views were developed using this approach which at least offers the advantage of now overloading the view. Among the 118,000 energy installations (hot and cold fluid networks, electricity networks, etc.) managed by the Group worldwide, few relate to chilled water networks and SUC is responsible for one of only two deployed in France. “Consequently, SUC is a showcase for Dalkia expertise in air conditioning. When they visit Dalkia’s Head Offices at La Défense, the Groups clients and partners take the opportunity to pay us a visit to see for themselves what a cooling production unit looks like in a high density built up area. Every year we receive some 350 visitors and most of them are sales people rather than technicians, so we felt it important to make an effort with the graphics”, states Rodolphe Petit, who like most of us likes the realistic graphic illustrations, especially the highly realistic synthetic imaging (standout animations, 3D technical descriptions, animation films, etc.). This is how the control room, that overlooks the technical installations (that are visible through a large glass window), with its impressive 50-inch display screen, offset from the other screens used by the operators, shows a true overview of the installation, showing equipment states, the power delivered by the cooling units, the flow rates of the pumps, the temperatures of the chilled water circuit (on leaving the plant and on the way back), the outdoor temperature, the various energy consumption

levels as well as the facility’s efficiency. This screen take advantage of InTouch’s graphic resources to provide a very “colorful”, dynamic 3D image, one that has all it takes to grab the attention of a visitor looking for a chance to see Dalkia’s expertise at work.

Multiple Source Real-time Data

Control operators also use the indications provided by the 50-inch screen. Some, like the weather forecasts, may at first sight seem superfluous… “No way,” says Rodolphe Petit, “this data is useful to the operators. If a storm is forecast, for example, then we know that debris will be carried away by the Seine River and that we will need to reduce the pumping rate. More generally, running an air conditioning unit requires anticipating demand and to do this, it is important to know the weather forecasts, the level of building occupation (weekends, public holidays, vacation periods), when new tower blocks will be opened, which ones are undergoing renovation work, etc. In other words, the whole process is way more complex than it seems and is a very difficult one to model as the environment is a highly changeable one.”. To improve operations, SUC uses the reports that are automatically generated by the Historian Server solution, the Wonderware historian application. It also uses indicators like the performance coefficient which is something of an energy efficiency indication. The latter value is calculated, in real time, from the data collected by the ArchestrA System Platform and Historian. Since this architecture was implemented, there has been a significant positive impact on 97 efficiency. For the rest, the architecture comprises two redundant servers that three workstations are connected to, two for operations and one for development needs. A fiber optic

Seine river, water pumping station

Ethernet network handles data transfers between the supervision system and the PLCs, as well as carrying the video surveillance data that is all combined on a separate screen. It should be noted that the video cameras are combined with image processing techniques able to detect any movement within the camera’s line of sight and that if any change shows up, then the relevant video image is automatically enlarged, immediately alerting the operator of a possible intrusion into the area monitored by the camera. This recent installation, (completed late in 2009), will now evolve especially to better set out the alarm hierarchy and obtain the power that is actually delivered to every customer.

Success with this project was the result of three-way collaboration between:

• WONDERWARE FRANCEWho brought a complete solution based on reliable and open tools that complement each other so as to meet the specific demands made by SUC.

• SUCAs project owner and facility operator, SUC was able to express their requirements and actively take part in the various development phases so as to achieve results to match their goals.

• BASISA long time player in the field of automation systems and industrial computing, BASIS was able to build on their knowledge of Wonderware products and the wealth of options offered by them to create cutting edge user friendliness to serve the operators. At BASIS the watchword is “an operator’s mind serving operators” and once again, this was applied to the project so as to create innovations in view presentation and browsing thanks to the possibilities offered by the latest versions of InTouch.

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Rel. 01/13 PN WW-4161

Seine river, water exchange display and icy water pumping station overview