In this March 2022 edition of Electricity + Control we cover a range of topics which are core to the interplay between energy + information in industry: Control systems + automation and Drives, motors + switchgear, as well as new developments in Measurement + instrumentation and some of the critical issues relating to Transformers, substations + cables.
Automation + control systems are advancing to digital platforms and communications networks across diverse industrial applications. We see how Siemens South Africa worked with Control Systems Integration to upgrade the legacy control system at Tiger Brands’ Roodekop, Germiston, beverages production plant. This collaborative project was the first in Tiger Brands’ planned move to digitalisation of the control and automation systems across all its production plants. In quite a different application, Francis Richt of Sandvik Coromant, specialist in manufacturing tools and machining solutions for the metalworking industry, introduces the company’s new automated inventory management system. This enables manufacturers to streamline the management of tool stocks and avoid time losses and production standstills by ensuring they always have the right tools available when they are needed.
In Drives, motors + switchgear Mads Warming of Danfoss Drives explains how digitalisation, intelligent automation and efficient drives can play a central role in expanding water treatment globally – and move the sector towards energy neutrality. A case in point: Aarhus Water in Denmark, assisted by Danfoss, succeeded in bringing the entire water cycle of the city borough of Marselisborg into energy neutrality. In another project we see how Nidec Control Techniques replaced the motor control technology on the two main hoist motors of the gantry cranes at the Columbus Stainless plant in Middleburg, Mpumalanga, to ensure the system is future-fit. The ladle cranes, carrying tonnes of molten metal through the plant, are critical to its continuous operations. And Rob Melaia of Marthinusen & Coutts shares the company’s intriguing fault-finding investigation and novel redesign and repair undertaken on a 17 MW motor – now returned to service in the petrochemical plant which commissioned the investigation.
In Measurement + instrumentation Dr Monika Heisterkamp and Dr Andreas Meyer of Endress+Hauser explain how process analytics, traditionally the preserve of laboratory instruments and analysis, is moving towards the development of compact field instruments which can be integrated into plant operations, with all the respective advantages.
In Transformers, substations + cables, Jan Aulenberg of Phoenix Contact Electronics, Germany, highlights the critical importance of failsafe communications networks in ensuring grid stability, particularly where renewables like solar PV are being integrated into the grid to secure stable supply. At utility substations, Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) are critical components used to monitor the power distribution system. Faced with continuing and overly time-consuming maintenance on these units, a power utility in the USA’s Midwest turned to NovaTech Automation to replace and upgrade all RTUs across its network in a multiyear programme.
Plenty of interest in this March edition – and Write @ the back SAICE reiterates the engineering sector’s readiness to assist in the implementation of infrastructure projects, which President Cyril Ramaphosa again emphasised, in his State of the Nation address in February, as key to South Africa’s Economic Recovery and Renewal Programme.