Creating a sandbox for mission-critical training
ABB Process Power Simulator can help you reduce risk, optimize operations and enhance training across the entire plant lifecycle
Regardless of the industry, there’s no substitute for hands-on training. First-hand experience is the best teacher. And getting your hands dirty, making a few mistakes and then realizing what you did wrong is a great way to learn.
Similarly, experimenting and having a risk-free way to validate new approaches is a great way to unlock new possibilities and levels of success.
But what about when you’re dealing with the complex and mission-critical electrical control systems involved in any process industry?
Safety concerns and the need to avoid outages make unproven electrical system changes and upgrades, as well as hands-on training for new operators, not only risky to your business, but very dangerous.
So how do you give your team ways to verify and validate changes and upgrades, or pursue optimization without worry? And provide operators with a realistic and practical learning experience?
Meet the sandbox
Digital simulations are like sandboxes: safe, disconnected environments where operators can train in a realistic but risk-free way. These simulations can expose operators to conditions that would otherwise be risky or even impossible, such as:
- Disconnection from the grid, and how the electrical system reacts, including stability of frequency and voltage
- Changes in network topology such as a generator trip, generator start/stop, or tie-in breaker trip
- The startup sequence after incident or black start
These realistic training experiences help operators feel more confident in handling process upsets and ensures they know the right steps to solve those problems efficiently and safely if they do happen.
Beyond training
Digital simulations can also help identify and prevent problems before they happen, saving plants both time and money. Plus, they give operators a safe method to experiment and find improvement opportunities without risking operations interruptions.
Through simulations, you can find answers to questions such as:
- How does the starting and stopping of heavy energy consumers impact active and reactive power demand, voltage and frequency?
- How can you avoid unwanted consequences from network splits and islanding?
- How does running generators in different modes effect power production?
Armed with this information, as well as other insights gleaned via simulation, you can optimize electrical consumption, lower costs, reduce emissions, meet legislative mandates and more.
It’s time to start simulating
By combining your plant electrical control system with a process power simulator, training and testing can be conducted in safer, risk-free way. All in a simulated environment that’s just like your actual one.
The ABB Process Power Simulator can help you reduce risk, optimize operations and enhance training across the entire plant lifecycle. It’s the only power simulator available that supports the real electrical control system interface your operators use every day—making it the most realistic option on the market.
And it does it all without requiring any changes to your electrical control system. We’ve worked to add functionality to provide dynamic voltage/frequency simulation, so you get the most lifelike experience possible.