Ashutosh Dave Global Solution Architect – Cement, Schneider Electric India
Today, energy is at the heart of everyone?s concern. More than ever, the current situation compels each and everyone to achieve more while using fewer resources. Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management, makes energy safe, reliable, efficient, productive and green. How? Simply by making energy visible and offering means to act and optimise its consumption. Ashutosh Dave discusses with ICR the new possibilities with the latest automation solutions. Excerpts from the interview.
Please tell us in brief about the automation solutions provided by you for the cement industry.
Process Expert System (PES) from Schneider Electric is the process expert system, which has solutions dedicated for cement, energy and MMM verticals with libraries embedded to control and provide automation solution. PES is designed for a collaborative architecture bridging silos to yield optimised plants and processes. This leads to production energy optimisation, reduced energy consumption per unit of production and improved emissions reporting.
PES can also connect to all remote systems, drives, power systems, non-electrical energy and intelligent systems and MES. This provides better consumption forecasting, critical for engaging in demand-response programs for industry.
How much is the scope for automation in the cement sector?
If we include drives and automation for any typical cement project along with QCX, laboratory and sensors then it could be the 16-20 per cent share of total project value.
The scope for control and automation system in cement industry is as follows:
Control system
- MV and LV drives
- Energy management system
- Field instruments and sensors
- Quality control and laboratory automation system
- Electrical substation automation
- Smart integration of all sub systems like mobile equipment sub PLCs and controllers, etc., and
- Integration to operational systems for end-to-end solution like MES, logistics, fleet management system and inventory.
What kind of automation is most sought after by the industry? Any changes in trends?
The industry is looking for a process control system, which should be reliable, energy efficient and an integrated solution. These days trend is to bring together the best from the PLC and DCS worlds and combine this with integrated energy management solutions and features to deliver superior value throughout the life cycle of a plant.
What challenges do you foresee for the automation sector in near future?
Few challenges that the automation sector is currently facing are: competitive market, availability of segment specific solutions and solutions integrated with electrical systems which provide maximum benefit and energy saving, and effective ownership of the task related to delivery with on time support, service and execution.
Features
- Ethernet-based, energy aware architectures for simplicity and performance
- Powerful and scaleable controller platform to suit the requirements of your application
- Single environment for engineering, operation and maintenance.
- Open and extensible objects and object libraries.
PlantStruxure PES
PlantStruxure PES is the new, process automation system from Schneider Electric. By bringing together the best of the PLC/SCADA and DCS worlds, it meets the demands of today?s production facilities and delivers on growing energy management requirements. Tight integration of the system ensures efficiency from design engineering through to operation – your engineers can develop the configuration faster and more accurately, your operators have all your data at their fingertips for better insight and to optimise the process, and your maintenance teams can diagnose and solve problems faster to avoid and reduce the downtime of your facility. PES helps in making the right decisions at the right time, which leads to increased uptime for the whole plant and directly impacts your bottom line. It helps in reducing waste by integrating energy and process data in one system.