Technology

Standardization of network technologies

The Alstom control system ALSPA Controplant is designed for energy applications. In this industrial sector, technologies with the highest level of reliability and availability are required. Alstom's decision to use a highly distributed structure for its control system makes the network a central part of the system.
In addition to Modbus TCP , Alstom selected Ethernet POWERLINK as fieldbus for its control system. Before complete implementation in the control system, it was necessary for Alstom to integrate the main characteristics of the POWERLINK technology. The most important characteristic is redundancy, which Alstom implemented as system standard. This redundancy, together with this deterministic network, provides the necessary level of availability for open and closed loop control of the power plant processes. The operation management network and the system network have been using Ethernet technology for many years. With the POWERLINK fieldbus, the entire network architecture is now based on the proven and standardized Ethernet technology. There are many advantages to a network that is based completely on Ethernet: Standardization of the network devices and protocols, reduced costs,
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simplified maintenance, high performance and the reduced risk of self-made solutions becoming obsolete.

Alstom and EMB

Alstom is a global leader in equipment and services for power generation and rail transport. In the field of power generation, Alstom is the world leader in integrated power plants, in power production services and air quality control systems. The company supplies 27% of the global capacity for power generation and covers all energy sources (gas, coal, renewable and nuclear). Alstom Power comprises five businesses: plant, turbo machinery, energy and environment systems, hydro and the new energy management business (EMB). EMB improves the efficiency of energy infrastructures from fuel supply to electricity production and consumption. Complementing Alstoms portfolio, EMB is in line with its clean power and Plant IntegratorTM strategies. Current developments will

Technology
further strengthen Alstoms position for clean power generation, via the introduction of new technologies to monitor and control air quality in real-time in conventional plants and new clean coal plants that may be equipped with carbon capture and storage. With the development of carbon trading schemes, plant management solutions will require flexible integration with carbon registries and markets. EMB focuses its expertise on four key areas of technology: Automation - including -- plant DCS, machine control & instrumentation Plant management - including plant & dispatch optimization, asset condition monitoring and simulation Grid connection & substation engineering - including isolated phased bus ducts Power electronics - including excitation, automated voltage regulation and reactive power control. EMB offers turnkey energy management solutions to optimize energy efficiency across the entire energy value chain, such as in the following areas: Plant efficiency increased through effective automation and control of the plants as well as new suites of power plant management software applications to manage plant scheduling, plant asset management as well as real-time plant simulation. Plant availability increasing plant operational flexibility to provide the proper amount of power at the right time to the grid. This means providing the ability to ramp power up and down several times a day. Power quality enabling customers to deliver the desired power quality, whether related to grid frequency (active power) or voltage management (reactive power). Within EMB, Alstom has designed a complete product line for control systems called ALSPA. Alstoms ALSPA CONTROPLANT DCS system is dedicated to the power generation market. Boiler control and protection and burner management system: Controflame Steam turbine controller: Controsteam Gas turbine controller: Controgas Generator controller, AVR and excitation: Automatic voltage regulator: dedicated to the excitation regulation of AC generator: Controgen. The control system is built around three major components: The control room HMI with its software and hardware, The engineering tool manages a consistent engineering design of the complete power plant including: DCS, machine control and simulator with single point of entry and a unique database. Perform the control and protection functions and are connected to the process. The multifunction controllers and field controllers offer a number of advantages e.g. reduction of field cabling, tolerance to failures and easy expansion of the system. All these elements are connected by fast Ethernet networks (Figure 1).

ALSPA
The ALSPA system consists of a flexible and open distributed architecture and is based on specific hardware components and standard communication networks. ALSPA products support core functions for plant operation, and thus benefit from multiple safety and availability features such as self-testing, redundancy in controllers and communications, synchronization and time stamping to 1 ms, fault tolerance, and continued autonomous operation in the event of the loss of control room equipment. ALSPA products can be used for the DCS (thermal, hydro, nuclear, etc.) and for machine control. For machine control, ALSPA includes the following controls: ALSPA field controller

Networking inside the ALSPA product

The site network being mainly located in the control room, has limited industrial constraints. It is generally based on a standard Fast Ethernet switched network. >>

Figure 1: Combined cycle power plant - Example architecture.

Video Wall Web Thin Clients WAN Firewall Site Network Operator Stations Core RT Servers Historian & IMS Servers Engineering workstation

EMS, PPS, IMS Reports

Condition Monitoring

Unit Network

Automation cell Multi-Function Controllers ALSPA Field Networks I/O Controllers HRSG & WSC Controller BOP & Electrical Controller

OLC CLC Protections

OLC CLC Protections

Steam Turbine Controller

Gas Turbine Controller

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Technology
Universal solution on which all new protocols are based No specific hardware required Proven and robust technology with safety protocol available Power plant control system shall benefit from a proven solution based on a robust protocol High-performance safety protocol available (up to SIL3) Highly deterministic performance and real-time network 100 Mbits/s becomes a standard for networking communications The network should be deterministic and should ensure that real-time constraints are fulfilled Possibility to have a fast cycle time within the ms range for deterministic data exchange The long-term availability of the technology was a key criterion. With power plants being operated for decades, the solution should have a long lifespan. The most secure way to achieve this target was selecting a standard technology based on standard hardware. And of course, it was not envisioned depending on a single source provider or to be linked to a technology that would be obsolete within the first decade. After a long study, simulation and prototyping phase, POWERLINK was selected for the field network of its control system.

Site network Fast Ethernet Technology HMI & Historian Engineering

Unit network Fast Ethernet Technology Automation Cell Cell network Deterministic Fast Ethernet Technology

Figure 2: ALSPA control architecture

The unit network links the three levels of the DCS. It is based on proven industrial Ethernet solutions. A fault tolerant ring topology ensures high availability. Determinism is not needed, as standard Ethernet is used with IP protocol (TCP/ IP and UDP/IP). The unit network has a speed of 100 Mbits/s or 1 Gbits/s and is made of fiber or copper. The field networks are located at the field level and have the highest constraints. The equipment connected on the field networks usually has high availability requirements and thus shall be redundant and connected via a highly available network (Figure 2).

stallation, maintenance and engineering. Furthermore, the use of real-time and deterministic networks allows for time synchronization and time stamping via the network. There is no more need for external specific wire to send the synchronization information and signal to field controllers.

Real-time deterministic network: The reason for choosing POWERLINK for the field network
While the choice was quite easy and natural for the non-deterministic network, the choice for the hard real-time deterministic network was more complex. A large study has been done on existing hard real-time technologies. The technology was expected to fulfill the following requirements: Open and independent standard, based on standard components A standard solution preferred by the market The use of standard equipment and components reduces costs Based on standard Ethernet To benefit from worldwide evolution on networking technology

Evolution of field network to Ethernet-based solution

The new applications for the power market require increasing network performance. To fulfill these new market demands, the need for a new technology based on high-speed Ethernet arose naturally. Among the offers for industrial Ethernet technologies, Alstom had to select two technologies, one without any deterministic constraints and one with high realtime determinism requirements. For its non-deterministic field network, Alstom came to the decision to select Modbus TCP after an intensive selection process. Modbus TCP was selected for its wide openness to third party devices. Real-time deterministic field networks allow for the use of distributed I/Os. Thus, real-time Ethernet networks allow for simplifying architecture, concentrating regulation processes inside the Cell Controller and reducing the cost of in28 automotion 07/2009

New architecture
Thanks to the implementation of POWERLINK inside the field network, the overall network architecture of the system is completely based on proven and standard Ethernet technologies. This unique full Ethernet network structure has several advantages. First of all; it enables users to standardise the network equipments and protocols (TCP&UDP/ IP). Secondly, even though the network itself is more expensive in certain cases because of the need
The simple and intuitive design of the threepart X20 System I/O modules offers excellent component density and helps the user quickly create solutions for challenging automation tasks.

Technology
Redundancy demo

tion after a long and intensive validation phase to verify that the High Availability of the system was ensured.

Conclusion
With the integration of POWERLINK in the field networks, Alstom has demonstrated the industrial advantages of using Ethernet technologies in power control systems. Alstom is confident in the emergence of the POWERLINK standard and very enthusiastic about the results as it has all the required qualities for critical process control. With the recent announcement of the release of an open-source POWERLINK solution (openPOWERLINK), Alstom is also convinced that it will push more and more third party device manufacturers to adopt this technology. The highly distributed architecture of control system sets the network as the heart of the system. That is why using a high-performance Ethernet network, based on standard Ethernet devices, is a fundamental choice. Moreover, Alstom offers a system which is standard, proven and reliable. By improving the technology, Alstom has gained more expertise and can push for further developments if necessary. Thanks to this development, the whole community can profit from it, as the new functionalities have been be standardised within the EPSG and are open to everyone. Using Ethernet technologies is not only a technology breakthrough for the present, it also ensures investment for future evolutions.

of active network devices (switches and hubs), the overall cost is reduced thanks to the decentralised architecture, the standardised equipments and protocols, the reduced cabling (only Ethernet, bus topology) and the network synchronisation of devices. Thirdly, the fully Ethernet-based network increases operational and maintenance facilities and the performance is higher. At last, the use of standard Ethernet technologies will make it possible to follow Ethernet evolution without additional R&D cost thanks to the benefit from R&D investments of the entire Ethernet community. POWERLINK being a pure software solution based on standard Ethernet components, it has the great advantage to be fully compatible with standard Ethernet devices. For example, one advantage is that it allows for the use of fibre technology to access distant equipment (several kilometres). The use of fibre also has the huge advantage of permitting networks to be located in electromagnetically disturbed areas.

(EPSG), Alstom was able to share its long-time expertise on highly available control systems. The High Availability technical working group headed by Alstom has been set up with the objective to release High Availability features. One of the most important requirements was to avoid modifying the current POWERLINK specification and maintaining full compatibility with existing devices. The technical working group achieved this target and introduced High Availability features as an add-on of the existing POWERLINK standard. Thus, Alstom was able to implement a POWERLINK network that reaches the necessary level of availability to control the processes of a power plant. Indeed, critical applications must be secured in a way that prevents functional disruptions in case of control hardware failures or cable damage. If one IPC with control functions breaks down, a second unit needs to immediately notice the malfunction and assume the tasks of the failing unit, preventing risk-entailing delays in operation. The cable redundancy implemented by Alstom allows easy localisation detection of the failure and avoids any loss of data (no cycle loss, no reconfiguration time). The High Availability feature of POWERLINK has been validated by a state-ofthe-art model-checking approach. After completing all models and technical developments, Alstom went into an intense simulation phase in order to confirm calculations. The simulation was also an opportunity to test the functionality of the system in a range of critical scenarios. The system was put into opera-

Alstom:

Evolution by Alstom in POWERLINK: High availability

Alstom has contributed to the POWERLINK evolution by including the High Availability feature in the standard. Thanks to the openness of the Ethernet POWERLINK Standardisation Group

Founded: 1928 Employees: more than 80,000 Turnover: 18.7 b EUR Locations: In more than 70 countries Products & Services: Alstom is a world leader in the transport and energy infrastructure industry www.alstom.com
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