October/November 2009 www.RemoteMagazine.com A Webcom Publication Cano Petroleum’s Cockrell Ranch Waterflood Project: What Wireless Network? The Cockrell Ranch Waterflood project is an ambitious tainability, ease of use, as well as the ability to obtain local enhanced oil recovery project, located in the Texas panhandle. support. With the aid of Rexel, the local Allen-Bradley dis- Cano Petroleum uses state of the art technology and methods tributor, Boss Automation decided on a winning combination to successfully recover oil from wells that would have once of Allen-Bradley hardware, Rockwell Automation software, been considered ‘tapped’. and ProSoft Technology The waterflooding wireless communication process uses pressurized solutions. Boss water to move through the Automation’s familiarity formation, driving raw and past success with crude oil out of the these automation products ground from wells. made them confident in Boss Automation of the combined solution. Spearman, Texas was The SCADA system brought in to design and consists of one install the discrete ControlLogix at a Main automation platform and a Master Station tied to four control network to moni- ControlLogix slave sub- tor pressure and flow of stations and over one hun- Networking this water into the wells. dred custom-built Remote With their experience in Terminal Units (RTUs), ...on page 10 automation, control and each comprised of an Allen- process optimization, the project evolved into the design and Bradley MicroLogix 1100 programmable logic controller Code=C Code=B and subscribe. please go to www.RemoteMagazine.com your free subscription today, start To Code=A Please look at the mailing label below and read code in red box. implementation of a new, fully automated, self-monitored (PLC) and a ProSoft Technology Industrial Hotspot radio. The SCADA system. The system was designed to gather, assemble, main master station and four sub-stations represent the back- : Your subscription is active and current. Your : and renew your subscription today. subscription is about to expire. Go www.RemoteMagazine.com Your : issue due to your involvement in the industry. are receiving the complimentary You : and transmit data from the wells and injectors and ultimately bone network of the project. Each of the four sub-stations acts bring it back to a master station. This allowed the day-to-day as a master for its respective sub-network. All communication operation of the field to be monitored and controlled from these from the wells and injectors to the sub-stations, and from the sites, and allowing the collected data to be used to produce sub-stations to the main master station, is handled wirelessly detailed production models. using ProSoft Technology’s Industrial Hotspot solution. Considerations for the system included: reliability, main- Please see Prosoft continued on page 2 Semaphore Shipping Wireless Monitor that Can Halve the Cost of Wireless SCADA ...on page 4 Onsite Power Research: Enabling the Smart Grid with Nanospears Could Lead to Cutting Edge Electrical Better Solar Cells Load Measurement Overpressure Protection with Enhanced Plant Efficiency From Wireless Communications and Data Driven Device Management ...on page 6 ...on page 8 ...on page 12 SCADA Products & Services Prosoft continued from cover The overall network covered approximately twelve square miles with the longest Paul Brooks, business development manager, Networks Portfolio, Rockwell link being only about two miles, and a bulk of the radios were positioned in an area of Automation said, “For this application, ProSoft’s wireless technology provides the about three square miles which presented a concern. “In a radio network of this size it backbone communication for the integration of this system creating a reliable, indus- is imperative that care be taken in setting up the PLC messaging,” said Haga. “If all trial and transparent network which allows Cano Petroleum to successfully monitor radios are trying to communicate at the same time, you can quickly swamp your band- their process data remotely." width with RF collisions and retries.” At the main master station, a human machine inter- Haga continued, “This in mind, we discussed the face (HMI) application for the system was developed need to create a polling style network rather than hav- using Rockwell’s RSView 32 software. The graphical ing all the radios trying to communicate at the same interface screens have proven to be user-friendly, and time. It takes a lot of planning up front to successfully the Messenger Pro feature provides the operators with install a radio installation of this size, and ProSoft’s detailed information about alarm conditions in human Technical Support group provides an excellent plan- voice, by automatically calling the cell phone of the ning resource.” person on call. ProSoft Technology’s RadioLinx OPC Chris Deakin of Boss Automation said, “The Server is used on the remote access computer to mon- process is incredibly reliable, consistent and makes for itor the status of the radio network. an essentially self-managed site. From the main An impressive amount of data, over 3,500 discrete SCADA monitoring station, the operators are able to input/output as well as 1,000 analog points, is gathered see virtual diagrams of the wells and what is going on and moved across the wireless network at about 11 within them, as well as all the data collected by the Mbps to the main master station where it is then RTUs and control units.” assembled into data log models, then interfaced by The project went live in spring of 2008, and has Cano’s own proprietary modeling software. since had near zero downtime. “The wireless network Rexel was instrumental in providing logistical as works so seamlessly and reliably that it is virtually well as technical support for the project. With respect transparent to the user,” said Deakin. “When all was to this large-scale wireless network, ProSoft said and done I asked the customer how they liked the Technology provided engineering support throughout the length of the project. wireless network. Their response: what wireless network?” Patrick Haga, ProSoft Technology wireless engineer said, “From the technical side Harry Forbes of ARC Advisory Group said, “The Cockrell Ranch Waterflood proj- of the project, the main reason this is a success story is because of the planning and ect illustrates three important points about industrial wireless. First, wireless is indis- care taken before starting the project. I probably spent close to 80 hours all told pensible for this kind of SCADA project to be cost-effective. Second, end users need working with Boss Automation control engineers on a path study using ProSoft’s to select hardened, industrial, field-proven products to provide a lifelong, reliable wire- Pathloss software. We worked very closely together, before and throughout the less solution. Thirdly, a well-designed wireless network can deliver data in a SCADA installation of the project, not only on the layout of the network but on the strategy system with very high reliability, in fact so high that end users forget about it.” for PLC messaging.” capability and a fault tolerant Ethernet implementation reduces the time, cost and disruption involved in deploy- to manage communications on the control network and ing a sub-metering installation. deliver reliable operation. The Wi-Pulse is an additional dual-input pulse count- The PAC8000 RTU supports DNP3 Ethernet commu- er used to count and transmit pulses generated by utili- nication protocol as well as fully supports the five IEC ty meters. It can be connected to an existing Wi-LEM 61131-3 automation languages. Any combination of network thus expanding the range of utilities that can be Ladder Diagram (LD), Sequential, Function Chart monitored, in addition to electricity. Wi-Pulse therefore (SFC), Function Block Diagram (FBD), Structured Text enables readings from existing stand-alone water and (ST), Instruction List (IL), plus Flow Chart can be used energy utility meters and sub-meters with a pulse output to develop, download, simulate, debug, monitor and edit to be monitored centrally using a Wi-LEM network. application programs. The Wi-Zone is a temperature and humidity transducer The PAC8000 RTU Controller has two high-speed that connects to a Wi-LEM network, allowing environ- GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms Ethernet ports to provide fault-tolerant communication. mental conditions to be monitored. Both new devices Announces PAC8000 RTU Controller The RTU supports fault tolerant communications to the are battery pow- GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms has released its new control room SCADA, however in the event communi- ered, simplify- PAC8000 RTU controller, a rugged, field-mountable plat- cations are lost, the RTU can continue to operate ing installation form. Combined with the 8000 Process I/OTM, it offers autonomously or adopt a user-defined safe state. If the as they require flexible system design, high system availability and it can RTU continues to operate, data will be logged for trans- no external utilize any off-the-shelf HMI package. mission once communications have been restored. The power supply. The PAC8000 RTU Controller is well suited for all control programs are held in nonvolatile memory so they They also both types of RTU applications, including oil & gas are retained in the event of a power loss. A new control feature an pipelines and wellheads. It is designed for use in the program can be downloaded to a controller while the