MechChem Africa November-December 2023

ABB Care for managing power utility assets ABB Southern Africa has introduced ABB Care, a structured approach to asset management for power utilities and plant that comes with fixed annual pricing and embraces digitalisation to detect issues early enough to act pre-emptively and to implement improvements.

P ower plants have three service needs in common, namely day-to day maintenance, performance optimisation, and lifetime extension. ABB Care is designed to meet these three common needs, regardless of plant applica tion or location. It covers the entire portfolio of ABB products and systems for power gen eration facilities, including distributed control systems, instrumentation, and electrical bal ance of plant. When it comes to automation equipment, controlling lifecycle costs and extending the life of assets is critical, as is transforming operations with digital solutions. To this end, ABB offers its clients service level agreements (SLAs) for maintenance and engineering support for automation and electrical systems. Known as ABB Care, the aim is to en hance the performance of a power plant’s automation and electrical assets, its opera tions, maintenance staff and the production process during its entire lifecycle, explains Edith Kikonyogo, ABB Southern Africa’s cluster manager for the energy industries. ABB Care is a complete service offering that raises the performance of the plant’s au tomation and electrical assets, its operations and maintenance staff, and the production process during the lifecycle of the facility. This lifecycle approach to plant and fleet service improves plant performance and reliability extends asset and plant operat ing life, protects equipment and intellectual investments, brings budget stability and predictability, and supports maintenance, engineering, and operations staff. The package is designed in line with client needs based on their specific requirements. It consists of a flexible service contracting framework that includes software and ser vices, spares, training, advanced services and, ultimately, digital offerings to align customers with Industry 4.0. While it is ap plicable to utilities customers such as power generation, service care solutions can be tai lored for different industrial sectors as well. Kikonyogo confirms that ABB has al ready rolled out ABB Care to some of its key clients. “We also feature remote care services. These are enabled through artifi cial intelligence systems that ABB offers as extended services.

“The benefits for customers are immedi ate and include fast response, improved efficiency of systems, equipment lifecycle management and reduced lifecycle costs. The ABB Care SLA offers a single support contract for all automation and electrical system service needs. It is developed in consultation with clients based on their pain points,” explains Kikonyogo. myABB self-service portal ABB Care includes access to a web-based myABB self-service portal that gives DCS users a window into the plant’s automation system 24/7, receiving insights into running data and system diagnostics that help to solve an issue at hand or plan for the future. ABB’s cyber security services, system main tenance and performance data, and system lifecycle status are available through my ABB. It includes tools for managing support cases and for optimising the on-site spare parts inventory. Cyber Security ABB Care includes an integrated suite of security services to assess and strengthen OT (operational technology) cyber secu rity. These include fingerprinting to gauge the ability of the DCS to withstand attack; backup management and verification of backups, patch delivery of evaluated soft ware updates from Microsoft and other vendors for relevance and system compat ibility; application whitelisting to ensure only approved software and processes are allowed to run; and file sanitisation to mini mise the risk of introducing an infected file into the control system. The services are available through an innovative cyber security solution that uni fies multiple cyber security defences to a single comprehensive view to cut time to risk recognition and remediation, and to simplify day-to-day cyber security operations. ABB Care has the flexibility to meet the maintenance and budget requirements of plants with different needs. Some plants may have 15 or 25 years of production left and be committed to lifecycle management. Others may have only two or three years of life remaining and be running on a ‘fix it only when it breaks’ basis. ABB’s service strategy and maintenance kits are designed to take

advantage of planned plant outages. Some power generators want to maxi mise output, while others want to ensure re liability. ABB Care delivers on both fronts by helping operators get the most out of their plant, people, and process. Fingerprinting and benchmarking identify which parts of the process are most at risk, or which categories of staff are most in need of skills improvement. The Care offering includes solutions to optimise the plant’s automation and elec trical assets and the production process. These range from continuous monitoring of turbines, rotating machinery, and other critical equipment to identify the first signs of equipment degradation or deteriorating plant performance. System Lifecycle Distributed control systems thrive on life cycle management and long-term service plans that evolve the system in small, incre mental steps. Regular scheduled upgrades enable the DCS to run optimally and keep up to date with the latest technologies and functionalities. This takes the guessing out of cost control and brings budget stability and predictability. Looking at some of the latest trends, Kikonyogo highlights asset performance management and cyber security as critical services that are in high demand in the mar ket. “Having an SLA in place ensures prompt reaction and prioritisation. It assists our clients with reliable lifecycle management, and allows them to plan for their mainte nance, operations and future investments,” she concludes. www.abb.com

30 ¦ MechChem Africa • November-December 2023