Process Control System information at your fingertips

Consol Energy, a publicly owned Pittsburgh-based producer of coal and natural gas, is one of the leading diversified energy companies in the U.S. Due to their various operations, they have a vastly distributed control system network. Multiple remote SCADA/HMI branches all connect back to a main control center in Claypool Hills, Virginia. They were experiencing a problem with blind spots (i.e., areas of their process they did not have vision into). This included the operator’s HMI screens at any number of their remote stations. Frequent SCADA/HMI-related problems caused a great deal of time to be put into supporting these remote operations over the phone or making frequent site visits to these extremely remote locations. The time and manpower required to support this kind of remote application was significant.

One such site was a gas processing facility in West Virginia, the next state over. The entire remote processing system was operated by a skeleton crew. The data from the remote location was sent back to the main control center in Virginia, but it did not provide enough information to properly troubleshoot and find the root cause of issues.

Visual confirmation of operator activity

Consol Energy decided to implement a video management system that included the capability to record operator consoles. The console recorder is a software module that enables automatic recording of the HMI or SCADA operator’s console display. With this tool, Longwatch archives exactly what the operator was seeing, because it records the video that is being sent to the display itself. Playing back what the operator was seeing proved to be a very valuable method for troubleshooting, training, and process improvement.

The recorder software provides access to live and recorded video of the operator’s screens. In this way, the control room in Virginia can have access to exactly what the remote operator’s screens look like at any given point in time. Managers can view their operator’s screens live or go back in time to any point to see what the screen looked like in the past.

The operator’s console should be looked upon as an asset, just like an important piece of equipment or part of your process. Consol Energy is now able to troubleshoot issues in real time or find out why an operator did not acknowledge an alarm. Was it due to operator error or did the HMI screen malfunction?

Remote emergency management

After the success of the console recording approach, Consol Energy wanted to add visual monitoring of their remote assets. At the same plant where the operator’s consoles were being recorded, Class I Division 2 cameras were put in place to monitor critical, potentially hazardous areas of their manufacturing process. When emergency situations arise, there is a need to determine the whereabouts of site personnel and also establish which part of the plant is affected.  The Class I Division 2 pan-tilt-zoom cameras provide remote “eyes” necessary to accurately assess the situation.

Consol Energy now has complete vision into their remote applications. The advanced video management system deployed provides video from operator screens along with video from hazardous area cameras that can be viewed anywhere on their network.

*The Article is from InTech