Reviewer details
Name: Louis Cotzer
Company: Eskom Matla Power Station
Telephone: (017)612 6402
Product details
Vendor: Xycom SA
Product name and version: Citect Version.5.21
Telephone:(011)462 6671
E-mail: [email protected]
General
Q: What industry is the scada being applied in?
A: The monitoring, reporting of data and trends as well as all alarms of a 400 kV power station near Kriel in Mpumalanga,
Q: Who did the system integration?
A: Eskom themselves
Q: Approximately how many man-hours did the integration take?
A: 18 months.
Q: How is the after-sales support handled?
A: Personal interaction of preventative support ie visits to Matla and support to the engineers before anything goes wrong. In the case of emergencies, emails and 24 h support back -up line.
Q: What sort of licensing agreement is used on the system?
A: External tags only are counted as I/O points - these are what were sold to us ie a 1500 I/O package. This means we were not charged for any internal tags but only the external tags that are used. This also makes upgrades and expansion easy.
System architecture
Q: How many tag points/I/O does the installation have?
A: 27 672 I/O tags.
Q: What operating system is the scada running on?
A: Windows NT.
Q: What impressed you most about the architecture?
A: Ability to upgrade as well as the truly openness of the system.
Q: Is the system integrated onto an intranet or the Internet?
A: Both.
Q: What sort of redundancy is built into the system?
A: We have being running Citect Server redundancy since 1997 (with minimal downtime).
Graphics
Q: Describe the graphics development process.
A: The images were drawn from scratch with Citect Graphic Builder. Additions where made in Corel Draw at a later stage.
Q: How would you describe the library of graphic images?
A: Comprehensive for our uses, ie furnaces stacker's boilers.
Q: Did you use any 'special' images?
A: Photographs.
Compatibility
Q: Did you run the scada in conjunction with any third-party application software?
A: Yes, we ran Citect and the old scada system parallel and then switched to Citect. Citect can run parallel to any other scada system. It is one of the features of this system.
Q: Does the scada allow for the user to create scripts to perform specific tasks?
A: Yes, it does but due to the vastness of our project all scripts are created in the control room and not by the end users.
Management reporting
Q: Is a trending and historical data reporting system included?
A: Yes part of standard menu page. Operators can view 700 hours of data without placing any drain on the system.
Q: Is a management reporting system included in the package?
A: Yes every day reports are printed automatically for the six units.
Q: Is the system integrated into a manufacturing execution system?
A: No. As this is a power station, Citect is only used for monitoring and control.
Conclusion
Q: What impressed you the most about the system?
A: The openness of the system, as well as the ease of use to the end users. Our operators are extremely happy with the product. I would recommend Citect. The openness of the system is true and the national and international support through the users group is unmatched.
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