Many fossil fuel and nuclear power plants around the world are aging rapidly. Many of these power plants are planning retrofits or complete replacement of their control systems and physical boiler hardware.
The global need for reliable, affordable and environmentally responsible energy continues to grow, challenging the electric power generation industry. Keeping a power plant operational and on line is critical. Retrofitting or installing industrial automation systems is a small percent of the initial cost, but has a large impact on plant design, construction, startup, operations and maintenance.
In many power plant upgrades, the power generation industry is adopting digital data transfer via fieldbus. The fieldbus permits the remote parameterization and reading of maintenance information, which the field device reports automatically to the control system technology. The capital expenditures for these power plants are justified by low maintenance effort and longer, reliable, system operation.