ICS Triplex ISaGRAF Partner, Centris Technologies Involved in Energy Efficiency Project in Northern Canada

The Canadian Government’s Minister of Natural Resources CETC-Varennes laboratory is running research projects on building energy efficiency. Some of these projects are on buildings in the northern regions of the Canadian territory where conditions are very harsh during the winter months. In this case, a hockey arena was selected in the Kangiqsujuaq Northern Village. This village is located in the northernmost tip of the province of Quebec, north of the tree line. The precise need was to monitor all operational parameters of the arena, to get a detailed energy consumption profile of the building, to recommend better designs for future similar constructions.

To get an accurate energy profile, all parameters affecting the energy consumption of the building must be monitored in real-time, and archived for later analysis. For example, outside air temperature and humidity, inside air conditions, compressor power consumption, coolant temperatures, lighting demand, heating demand and such must be monitored.

The mandate Centris Technologies received was therefore to install all necessary instruments to monitor these parameters, and bring back, in real-time, this data to a central server in the research lab, located in Montreal, for analysis and permanent archiving.

The solution Centris Technologies implemented in the arena used ISaGRAF, installed on an ICPDAS 8437 data acquisition chassis. This chassis reads signals from the various instruments, located all over the arena. Then, from the research lab, a PCVue SCADA station scans in real- time the controller installed in the arena. Communications are transmitted through a satellite uplink to a base communication station in the village, then through a secondary wireless link from the base station to the arena.

The system has been in operation since October 2005. Typical response times to read requests from the lab are under 800 ms.

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For more information on this application, please contact Centris Technologies directly at:
(514) 927 6964 or by email at: info@centristech.com
Centris Technologies inc.
www.centristech.com

Over the next few enewsletter editions, ICS Triplex ISaGRAF will be including several technical notes that are designed to provide further insight into the IEC 61499 industrial standard integral to ISaGRAF 5.0. Here is the first of such technical notes, entitled, "IEC 61499 System Model."

IEC 61499 System Model

Definition
The IEC 61499 standard defines a distributed model for splitting different parts of an industrial automation process and complex machinery control into functional modules called function blocks. These function blocks can be distributed and interconnected across multiple controllers.

System: A collection of DEVICES interconnected and communicating with each other by means of a communication network consisting of segments and links.

Device: An independent physical entity capable of performing one or more specified functions in a particular context and delimited by its interfaces.

Resource: A functional unit having independent control of its operation which provides various services to
applications including scheduling and execution of algorithms.

Application: A software functional unit that is specific to the solution of a problem in industrial-process measurement and control. An application may be distributed among devices and may communicate with other applications.

Function block: A software functional unit that is the smallest element of a distributed control system. It utilizes an execution control chart (ECC) state machine to control the execution of its algorithms.

Overview
A system model represents parts included in a measurement and control system. Figure 1 shows the parts of this system model. Many devices (configurations) are connected together with a communication network. The device is self-contained hardware capable of executing a control loop. The device is a controller having a processor and memory devices and may also contain a communication network when used in a distributed application. The devices are PLCs solving the control logic and are seen in intelligent actuators, such as valves and in sensors, such as flow meters. Any fieldbus will do for the communication network, whether Industrial Ethernet, Profibus, DeviceNet or others. Some communication networks are faster while others are more deterministic; therefore, network selection depends on the process to control. Hard realtime and soft realtime applications require specialized communication networks to meet time critical behaviors.
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Figure 1: The IEC 61499 system model

ICS Triplex ISaGRAF is celebrating another successful year having surpassed 400,000 ISaGRAF software licenses sold worldwide. This achievement represents a 30% increase over last year.

ICS Triplex ISaGRAF continues to provide solutions for a wide variety of hardware platforms including, RTUs, Motion Controllers, CNCs, Embedded Controllers, Remote Controllers and PLCs.

ISaGRAF is the preferred software package for hundreds of OEMs and Systems Integrators worldwide for the stability of the ISaGRAF runtime, its hardware and software independence, its compliance with IEC 61131 and IEC 61499 and the portability of the ISaGRAF Kernel.