Standardized Interface & Hardware Allow Oil & Gas Company To Rapidly Onboard New Facilities

Project Summary:

Edge Controls combined the flexibility of Opto 22 edge devices to standardize field equipment configuration and commissioning with Ignition 8.1, Chariot MQTT Broker, and Perspective, utilizing these standards to rapidly onboard new facilities and provide users with new workflows with a fully mobile-responsive card-based user interface, all while lowering overall costs.

Problem:

Before this project, Stonehill Environmental Partners' assets consisted of a mix of brownfield solutions implemented by a variety of integration companies under varying sets of requirements. This led each facility to have its own operational quirks and challenges that needed to be accounted for before any sort of upgrade or improvement would be viable.

During this time, it became obvious to Stonehill that more agility in field automation and SCADA would be crucial to achieving their evolving business objectives. To help them meet those goals, Edge Controls answered the call. This project provides a framework for simultaneously standardizing those varying brownfield configurations, providing a concrete data model for rapid deployment of future facilities, and setting the stage for an innovative, evolving feature set.

Solution:

Field Automation

• Selected Opto 22 hardware
  • Controllers
    • EPIC PR1s and PR2s
    • Huge benefits with CODESYS
      • Generous, cost-efficient licensing model
      • Enables easier cross-training of automation technicians (into SCADA) and SCADA engineers (into PLC programming)

Energy Monitoring Units (RIO EMUs)

• Advanced drive/motor analytic collection
• This system began collecting analytics ahead of time in preparation for implementing machine learning for predictive maintenance schedules.
• Opto's EMU offering was a surprise and accelerated existing plans to branch into this area.
• Edge Controls uses variable frequency drives to control pumps (typically 300-1,000HP), and EMUs capture incredibly precise data about Stonehill’s real-time operations.
• Physically durable hardware
  • Texas has over 100 days a year over 100 degrees F
• Cost-effective
  • Provides immediate value to customers and attractive ROI
  • Moved away from legacy OPC polling to MQTT report on change

SCADA

• Cloud-based VM infrastructure
  • Scalable and flexible with capacity for growth
  • Clusters:
    • Frontend (client logins, can expand as more users are onboarded)
    • Backend (data collectors, can expand as more facilities/sites are added)
    • Database Engine (historian, can be expanded as more storage or query/calculation speed is needed)

Fully mobile-responsive in Perspective

• Uses a card-based system to enable dynamic graphical layouts for mobile users.
  • This is more than basic flex containers.
  • Desktop users have more graphics/animations and differing layouts than mobile users.
• Complete feature parity between desktop and mobile versions.
  • Mobile users can do everything a desktop user can do, albeit slightly differently.

Standardized UDTs to precisely match field configuration

• Allows for much tighter integration between physical HMI and cloud SCADA.
  • The HMI views were also designed to mimic SCADA's card-based UI.
• Heavily parameterized to allow for dynamic flexibility to account for brownfield configurations.
• Edge Controls has been able to build entire facilities by mixing and matching constituent UDTs within an hour that previously took days.

Modern, card-based UI

• Looks and feels like other iOS/Android apps users are already familiar with.
  • Eases training and onboarding.
  • Use Apple and Google developer style guides where possible.
• Cards are tightly coupled with UDTs.
  • Allows the UI to be more fit-for-purpose & dynamic.
  • Only relevant data is displayed per instance.
  • Allows for varying levels of graphical presentation.
• Dynamic loading of user preferences.
  • A subset of settings (theme, etc.) are saved to the database on logout and retrieved upon login.
  • There are plans to greatly expand this functionality to include default trend parameters, fonts (size, color, font family), colorblind-centric themes, etc.

External identity provider with robust, best practice security configurations (Okta)

• User MFA
• Adaptive geo-location lockout
• Email magic link login
• Future: password-less login & biometrics (ex: FaceID for iOS)
• Ability to federate access with existing IT department user management systems

Results:

Edge Controls has seen results above and beyond the typical benefits of increased SCADA utilization. The highlights of these results include:

• Interpersonal:
  • Improved communication.
  • Less back-and-forth communication is necessary to achieve results.
  • There is now a common language and terminology when creating plans. Staff knows what various templates are called, how they work, and what modifications need to be communicated.
  • Edge Controls does not need to cover tag lists, register addresses, data structures, etc. each time they provision a new site/facility.
• Timelines:
  • Timelines are less stressful to achieve when things take a fraction of the time.
  • Stakeholders walk away feeling more confident in their decisions.
• Technical:
  • UDT & tag parameter/attribute inheritance makes rapid fixes easy to achieve.
  • User preferences system makes users feel empowered to request changes and tweaks to fit their needs.
  • Scalable architecture allows Edge Controls to achieve objectives earlier, providing the ability to store massive amounts of tag history for future analytic use far ahead of time without concern about disk space or hardware sizing.
• Analytics & Data Collection:
  • Storing and combining EMU measurements with operational process variable data enables Stonehill to create analytics & reports that were not easily achievable in the past, such as:
    • Calculated pump curves in real time
    • Advanced pump health and efficiency reports
    • Calculated cost of chemical injection in real-time
    • Calculated electrical consumption of variable-frequency drives and pumps in real time
    • Calculated lease operating costs in real time
    • State and federal regulatory reports with precise data
• Edge Controls was able to build an entirely new saltwater disposal facility in Ignition in under 15 minutes.
  • Once the automation team had tags publishing to our MQTT broker, the sub-15-minute timer started.
  • Steps done within 15 minutes:
    • Create new site folder structure.
    • Instantiate relevant UDTs, hand-typing various parameters.
    • Validation of Ignition Tag Provider to MQTT Engine references.
    • Data was already validated in the field before publishing to the broker.
• Instantiation within Perspective for visualization
  • This step is automatic. Each Perspective view dynamically counts the data structures and adds the correct number of cards.
    • Example: If the SWD has four injection skids instead of five, the screen only shows four. No one needs to open or edit any views to achieve this.
• Validation of Perspective visualizations
  • Final "sanity check" to ensure it is working and ready for the customer.
• Business:
  • Ignition's licensing costs and development time combined are still cheaper than just licensing costs of competing products.
  • Cost-effective Opto hardware enables Edge Controls to grow functionality and scale to Stonehill's demands without worrying about needing to "rip & replace" in five years.
• The paradigm shift needed to utilize MQTT has resulted in cost savings around transmitting data because cellular bandwidth usage has been reduced.
• SWD operating cost reduction
  • By utilizing real-time operational data, Stonehill reduced chemical injection costs by more precise dosing.
  • Variable frequency drives only operate at the necessary levels at any point in time, reducing wasted electricity and lowering maintenance costs.

Start Date: January 2023

Deploy Date: February 2024