Edith Kikonyogo, ABB Southern Africa’s introduced ABB Care, a structured approach to asset management for power utilities and plant that comes with fixed annual pricing and embraces digitalisation to detect issues early enough to act pre-emptively and to implement improvements.
Power plants have three common service needs: day-to-day maintenance, performance optimisation, and lifetime extension.
Power plants have three service needs in common, namely day-to-day maintenance, performance optimisation, and lifetime extension. ABB Care is designed to meet these three common needs, regardless of plant application or location. It covers the entire portfolio of ABB products and systems for power generation facilities, including distributed control systems, instrumentation, and electrical balance of plant.
When it comes to automation equipment, controlling lifecycle costs and extending the life of assets is critical, as is transforming operations with digital solutions. To this end, ABB offers its clients service level agreements (SLAs) for maintenance and engineering support for automation and electrical systems.
Known as ABB Care, the aim is to enhance the performance of a power plant’s automation and electrical assets, its operations, maintenance staff and the production process during its entire lifecycle, explains Edith Kikonyogo, ABB Southern Africa’s cluster manager for the energy Industries.
ABB Care is a complete service offering that raises the performance of the plant’s automation and electrical assets, its operations and maintenance staff, and the production process during the lifecycle of the facility. This lifecycle approach to plant and fleet service improves plant performance and reliability, extends asset and plant operating life, protects equipment and intellectual investments, brings budget stability and predictability, and supports maintenance, engineering, and operations staff.
The package is designed as per client needs based on their specific requirements. It consists of a flexible service contracting framework that includes software and services, spares, training, advanced services and, ultimately, digital offerings to align customers with Industry 4.0. While it is applicable to utilities customers such as power generation, service care solutions can be tailored for different industrial sectors as well.
Kikonyogo confirms that ABB has already rolled out ABB Care to some of its key clients. “We also feature remote care services. These are enabled through artificial intelligence systems that ABB offers as extended services.
“The immediate benefits for customer are immediate and fast response, improved efficiency of systems, equipment lifecycle management and reduced lifecycle costs. The ABB Care SLA offers a single support contract for all automation and electrical system service needs. It is developed in consultation with the client based on their pain points,” explains Kikonyogo.
myABB self-service portal
ABB Care includes access to a web-based myABB self-service portal that gives DCS users a window into the plant’s automation system 24/7, receiving insights into running data and system diagnostics that help to solve an issue at hand or plan for the future. ABB’s cyber security services, system maintenance and performance data, and system lifecycle status are available through myABB. It also includes tools for managing support cases and for optimising the on-site spare parts inventory.
Cyber Security
ABB Care includes an integrated suite of security services to assess and strengthen OT (operational technology) cyber security. These include fingerprinting to gauge the ability of the DCS to withstand attack; backup management and verification of backups, patch delivery of evaluated software updates from Microsoft and other vendors for relevance and system compatibility; application whitelisting to ensure that only approved software and processes are allowed to run; and file sanitisation to minimise the risk of introducing an infected file into the control system.
The services are available through an innovative cyber security solution that unifies multiple cyber security defences to a single comprehensive view to cut time to risk recognition and remediation, and to simplify day-to-day cyber security operations.
ABB Care has the flexibility to meet the maintenance and budget requirements of plants with very different needs. Some plants may have 15 or 25 years of production left and be committed to lifecycle management. Others may have only two or three years of life remaining and be running on a ‘fix it only when it breaks’ basis. ABB’s service strategy and maintenance kits are designed to take advantage of planned plant outages.
Some power generators want to maximise output, while others want to ensure reliability. ABB Care delivers on both fronts by helping operators get the most out of their plant, people, and process. Fingerprinting and benchmarking identifies which parts of the process are most at risk, or which categories of staff are most in need of skills improvement.
The Care offering includes solutions to optimise the plant’s automation and electrical assets and the production process. These range from continuous monitoring of turbines, rotating machinery, and other critical equipment to identify the first signs of equipment degradation or deteriorating plant performance.
System Lifecycle
Distributed control systems thrive on lifecycle management and long-term service plans that evolve the system in small, incremental steps. Regular scheduled upgrades enable the DCS to run optimally and keep up to date with the latest technologies and functionalities. This takes the guessing out of cost control and brings budget stability and predictability.
Looking at some of the latest trends, Kikonyogo highlights asset performance management and cyber security as critical services that are in high demand in the market. “Having an SLA in place ensures prompt reaction and prioritisation. It assists our clients with reliable lifecycle management, allows them to plan for their maintenance, operations and future investment,” she concludes.