Automation | Eramet Norway Sauda

Designing a plant for the future with IEC 61850

Init helped Eramet Sauda become one of the first plants in Norway to use IEC 61850 between furnace breakers, transformers and System 800xA, enabling condition-based monitoring and faster troubleshooting.

 

Eramet Norway’s smelter in Sauda, established in 1915, produces refined ferromanganese for the global steel industry. A stable and well-monitored power supply is essential for the plant’s furnaces.

Together with Linjemontage and Eramet, Init Kristiansand (then Necto) set out to design a plant for the future, with modern, standardised communication between the furnace power system and the control system.

Engineers from Init and Linjemontage testing protection relays at Eramet Sauda

ASPIRATION

Better insight into the furnace power supply

Eramet wanted more and better information from the breakers and transformers supplying its furnace, so that equipment condition could be followed over time, wear could be detected early, and faults in the power supply could be traced quickly and accurately.

SOLUTION

Among the first in Norway to build on IEC 61850

The plant in Sauda is among the first in Norway to use the IEC 61850 standard for communication from the furnace’s breakers and transformers to the System 800xA control system. The solution was developed in close collaboration with Linjemontage and Eramet.

IEC 61850 provides time-synchronised information exchange and enables condition-based data from the breakers. All protection relays are synchronised, and alarms are time-stamped with high accuracy.

Far more information now flows into the system than before. That gives us more efficient status monitoring and earlier warnings as equipment wears, and with all protection relays synchronised and alarms time-stamped with high accuracy, troubleshooting faults in the power supply has become much easier.

Vidar Haugland, IT and Automation Engineer, Eramet Norway

RESULT

More information for better decisions

Eramet Sauda now has a far richer flow of information from its power system into the control system, enabling more efficient status monitoring and earlier warnings as equipment wears.

Accurate, synchronised time-stamping makes it much easier to trace the sequence of events when a fault occurs in the power supply, reducing troubleshooting time and supporting a more condition-based approach to maintenance.

Reach out

for more information

Geir Kulia

Commercial Manager, Init Norway

+47 99 29 98 67

[email protected]

Init Kristiansand, Norway

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