Boxberg Power Plant Unit R

Location: Boxberg, Germany

System/Technology: Automated migration of control technology from Mauell to ABB

Services: Commissioning, Quality assurance, Site management, Documentation, As-built status and data recording, Pre-project planning and tendering, Basic-engineering and pre-engineering, Detail engineering, Installation supervision, Training

Industry Branch/Type of Plant: Power Generation, Power plants

Client: LEAG / ABB

Activity period: Part 1: Data export, analysis and conditioning Part 2: Automatic transfer of function plans, operating diagrams

Project description

In 2011, the catastrophe in Fukushima and the signs of climate change reduced the focus on large power plants in Germany and Europe to a minimum.
As a result of the lack of demand, Mauell, a manufacturer of control and automation systems for large power plants and steam turbines, was forced to take the ME-4012 control system, which had also been used at Block R of the Boxberg lignite-fired power plant, off the market and discontinue it.
The data and server systems of the power plant unit, which had already been in operation for several years at that time, could then no longer be cyclically renewed in accordance with the state of the art. 
In the course of the power plant‘s classification as critical infrastructure and the increasing failure rate of individual computer components, there was an urgent need for an upgrade.
In order to avoid a long plant shutdown, which would have been necessary if the control system had to be completely replaced, INP Deutschland GmbH developed a way to read out the entire control system, including the software and hardware information, from the running system and automatically transfer it to a vendor-neutral database.
Together with the control system manufacturer ABB, which equipped the control system of the sister block Q at the site, further interfaces were created based on the generated data and algorithms were developed that can automatically generate hardware and function plans, as well as operating diagrams, from the inventory data.
Furthermore, a possibility was created to convert the plant successively over a period of several years. For this purpose, an interface was programmed that allows mixed operation of existing components and control cabinets of the Mauell system together with the successively installed ABB Melody system without functional restrictions. 
The interface was developed in such a way that the entire existing plant of the remaining Mauell system can be connected via network without program adaptation and the ABB 800xA operating and monitoring system can take over all operating and monitoring functions without any significant modifications to the existing configuration.
ABB and INP then received an order from LEAG to migrate the visualization of unit R in the Boxberg power plant from MAUELL VIEW 3 to ABB 800xA, to migrate an automation cabinet from MAUELL to Melody and to convert the turbine control technology from ALSPA to Melody.