Events for Business, Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain & IT Executives | ARC Advisory Group

Presenting ARC's Forum at POWER-GEN International 2011

ARC Inside:  DCS End-of-Life Survival Guide

December 11, 2011 - Las Vegas, Nevada

ARC's Forum at POWER-GEN International is a training course focusing on issues and alternatives facing owner-operators of older Distributed Control Systems (DCS) that are ending their useful life.  The course will explain options for managing older systems, market forces driving migration to a replacement system, executing a migration and support strategy, offerings of leading DCS suppliers, the cost of change, and migration project recommendations. 

ARC is pleased to participate in POWER-GEN International 2011, the industry leader in providing comprehensive coverage of the trends, technologies, and issues facing the electric power generation sector.  As the need to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively becomes increasingly important, this event bridges challenges with solutions.

Course Objective

The course objective is to educate attendees on managing DCS end-of-life issues.

The DCS is critical for unit reliability, yet many plants today operate with a seriously aging one.  Some units operate with systems, components, or software that is no longer supported by the supplier.  Furthermore, the typical DCS in power generation encompasses several critical and near-critical systems - burner management system, turbine control, energy management system, HMI, historian, etc.  The integration of these systems needs to persist through changes to any of them.  Finally, the loop-by-loop migration strategy that may work for DCS’s in process plants cannot be used in power plants, where all the upgrade work needs to be executed during the limited window of unit outages.

Given this need, ARC will explain the various options for managing operations with an older DCS and review the options available to owner-operator utilities.  The program will also drill into the specific programs for migration to a current system available from several major DCS suppliers whose systems are commonly found in power plants.

Instructors

Harry Forbes
Senior Automation Analyst, ARC Advisory Group

Harry leads ARC’s coverage of the electric power industry, including Smart Grid, industrial networking, and network/communication standards.  He has 25 years experience in automation, power generation, energy management, modeling and simulation, advanced control, and optimization.  Harry has worked for Simsci-Esscor, Invensys, and Foxboro.  He also worked as a performance and automation engineer at DTE Energy (formerly Detroit Edison).

Wil Chin
Research Director, ARC Advisory Group

Wil leads the industrial field device consulting team at ARC, covering process measurement technologies.  He is responsible for pressure, flow, level, temperature, and related markets.  Wil also covers field device communication protocols, plant asset management, and wireless devices.  He has 30 years experience in industrial field instruments, holding management positions at Krohne and The Foxboro Company, and engineering positions at BIF, a Unit of General Signal, and Stone & Webster Engineering.

To Register

The fee for the course is $400.  To register, please visit POWER-GEN's Registration Page.  During the registration process you will view a page that allows you to select the events you want to attend.  Under Sunday, select 'CPC-202 DCS End-of-Life Survival Guide'. 

For More Information

For more information on ARC Inside at POWER-GEN International, please contact John Kuenzler, 781-471-1153, jkuenzler@arcweb.com.