Dennis Nash, Control Station, Inc. President PostedOctober 4, 2018 AT 12:55 PM PID Tuning Fundamentals: Collecting Good Data At one time or another we’ve all heard the old adage: Garbage in, Garbage out. While it’s an old saying, it’s a good one and it’s highly relevant to PID controller tuning and process optimization. Read More
Dennis Nash, Control Station, Inc. President PostedSeptember 25, 2018 AT 10:06 AM PID Tuning Fundamentals: Good Control Should Be SIMPLE After all these years the Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller remains the workhorse for process manufacturers. Still, after more than 50 years of use in industry many practitioners continue to view the tuning of PID controllers as a “black art”. Read More
Allan Evora, Affinity Energy President, Executive Management PostedMay 23, 2017 AT 8:30 AM 4 Biggest SCADA Cost Drivers SCADA has a lot of moving parts and add-ons, which is why the implementation cost varies greatly from project to project. But no matter what industry or environment, everyone is always looking to cut unnecessary costs. There are several factors that influence cost: the number of tags or points in your SCADA system, the number of clients that want to simultaneously view the system, amount of resiliency needed, amount of labor it takes to design and integrate, and ultimately which SCADA software you choose. By understanding the biggest SCADA cost drivers, you should be able to get a better grasp on why SCADA costs what it does, and maybe even make some money-saving decisions up front. Cost driver #1: Materials and selection of SCADA software There are a variety of SCADA solution providers out there. Trihedral's VTScada, Schneider-Electric's Wonderware, GE's Cimplicity, and Tatsoft's FactoryStudio to name a few. Some SCADA solutions are geared toward large enterprise ... Read More