12th April 2004

City Public Service selects Foxboro gas distribution SCADA system from Invensys for state-of-the-art "nerve center".

New Primary Control Center will help ensure reliable natural gas service to customers throughout the fast-growing San Antonio, Texas area.

City Public Service (CPS), the nation's largest municipally owned energy company providing both natural gas and electric service, has selected Invensys to implement an advanced Foxboro gas distribution SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system in a new state-of-the-art Primary Control Center (PCC) now under construction in San Antonio, Texas.

"From an operational standpoint, cutting-edge technical systems [such as the Foxboro SCADA system] will enable the CPS Primary Control Center to achieve a remarkable 99.99 percent operational availability, allowing CPS to better monitor its service area with more precision and to automatically correct system interruptions," said Milton Lee, CPS general manager and CEO, at the March 2003 groundbreaking ceremony for the new 72,200-square-foot Primary Control Center, which will serve as the high-tech "nerve center" for the municipality.

The new Foxboro gas distribution SCADA system will replace an aging system with the latest open system architecture that facilitates easy integration of third-party applications, devices, and toolsets.

To achieve City Public Service's 99.99 percent availability target, the new Foxboro SCADA system will utilize a robust, Unix-based dual-redundant Master Station in the Primary Control Center, plus an offsite emergency backup system.

The system will provide a comprehensive SCADA toolset plus Foxboro's advanced SCADA applications for gas scheduling, real-time and historical Gas Flow tracking, gas accounting, line pack analysis, AGA calculations, closed-loop flow and pressure control, and over/under pressure analysis. Support for the ICCP (Inter Control Center Protocol) will facilitate data exchange with other ICCP-enabled control systems. 

The Foxboro SCADA Master Station will support communications with EFM (electronic flow measurement) devices as well as a large number of legacy RTUs (remote terminal units) located throughout the 4,420 miles of gas pipelines in the network. In addition to the primary and backup SCADA systems, Invensys is also providing a dedicated development system.

"We're very excited about the new Foxboro gas distribution SCADA system," said Bill Woosley, Gas Control Manager at CPS. "In addition to providing the high level of availability we require to help ensure superior customer service, the new system will provide our operators with much better and more timely information than was previously available."

Contact:  Randy Hartung

6th March 2004

INVENSYS INDIA RECEIVES HIGH PRAISE FROM FOXBORO SCADA SYSTEM CUSTOMER.   

Invensys India recently received a letter from Gujarat State Petronet Ltd. (GSPL) praising the company for its performance on two recent SCADA pipeline projects. These projects included the supply and implementation of the latest Foxboro SCADA systems, RTUs and field instrumentation. 

Based on their high level of satisfaction with the Foxboro SCADA system and the support they have received from Invensys SCADA experts in India, Australia, and the US, GSPL has placed an additional order for a third Foxboro SCADA system.

The customer comments "The key to accelerating our program of expansion of Gujarat GAS GRID was to find both the right product and people to commission the pipeline monitoring system ... We are glad to recommend the Foxboro SCADA system to all Oil & Gas transporting facilities around the world."

Contact:  Chris Smith

18th November 2003

Foxboro SCADA ensures production at major steel plant during national blackout.

In September this year, Italy experienced a nationwide blackout that brought much of the country to a standstill.  But, thanks to the Foxboro SCADA ECS (Electrical Control System), an Invensys customer in Taranto was able to continue to operate despite being disconnected from the national grid for 15 hours.

One of the most modern in Europe, the plant produces 9 m tonnes of steel plates and pipes a year.  A halt to the steel production chain would have proved extremely costly as well as dangerous.

The plant produces 1.15 GW of electricity internally  from three independent thermal power plants fed by diesel oil, methane, co-generated steam and gases recovered from coke ovens, steel plants and five blast furnaces. 

As the Foxboro SCADA ECS they have installed has the enhanced capability of automatically reacting to power failure and network changes, they were able to switch to the internally produced electricity for the 15 hours they were disconnected from the grid, AND successfully restore the connection once power returned, thereby securing continuity of production.

Contact: Stefano Strappaveccia