Yet with few exceptions, the vast amounts of time and money are spent on all the sexy technologies that lie between the two. PC-based process control, long debated because of concerns over robustness, is moving into power generation. The winners, business analysts emphasize, will be the companies that select the right IT tools, and put them to the right IT use. And the benefits aren't just for new facilities. One of many older power plants that has benefited from the new technology is Sim Gideon Unit 3, owned by the Lower Colorado River Authority, Austin, Tex.
Enterprise software can link diverse applications into a single, tightly integrated IT system.
This May, for instance, GE Fanuc Automation Inc., Charlottesville, Va., introduced the ControlStation, an offering that combines PC control software with an industrial computer and a graphical user interface. Running under a Windows NT or Windows CE operating system and featuring a common development environment based on FrameworX software, the ControlStation provides a high level of interoperability. For example, ControlStation CE supports Profibus, DeviceNet, and GE Fanuc Series 90-30 PLC protocols. In retrofitting the new controls, only 16 days elapsed from the beginning of the outage to full commercial power production. Consider that Pentium hardware outperforms even the fastest PLC by a factor of 20.