Austrian SCADA contract from gas storage company

An Invensys Process Systems product story

Edited by the Processingtalk editorial team Feb 2, 2006

Invensys Process Systems Austria has won a contract to supply a SCADA system based on its I/A Series hardware for a major site revamp being carried out by OMV Austria Exploration and Production

Invensys Process Systems Austria has won a contract to supply a SCADA system based on its I/A Series hardware for a major site revamp being carried out by OMV Austria Exploration and Production.

Since 1969 this Vienna-based company has been a European leader in the design of gas storage products.

Today its natural gas reservoirs lie along the most important pipelines in Austria and can hold up to 1.8 billion m3 of gas.

As part of a revamp of its site near Schonkirchen-Reyersdorf, OMV Austria Exploration and Production needed to upgrade an aging Entronic legacy control system supplied by Rolls-Royce.

However, the system was found to be at its technical limit and could not handle modern technologies such as field device tool (FDT) and device type management (DTM) programmes.

Easier adoption of such technologies is a priority for OMV Austria Exploration and Production, as are the requirements for an open system that uses a commercial off the shelf (COTS) platform and a faster response time from its operators.

The company also wants the ability to better document its hardware and software assets in order to reduce maintenance costs.

The new SCADA system supplied by Invensys Process Systems Austria will communicate with the OMV 121 remote gas wells, its solar turbines and a remote dispatch centre based 20km away from the site.

In addition, Profibus DP will be used to communicate with the site drives and with its fire and gas detection systems.

The Modbus protocol will be used for communications with both the gas dispatch station and with the Trident emergency shutdown system that Invensys is also supplying.

HART interfaces will be used to link field devices using FDT/DTM technology.

Invensys is particularly pleased to have won this contract as it is the first involvement with OMV Austria Exploration and Production for over 20 years: from 1970-1984 the site used a Foxboro Spec200 control system.