I'm starting a series of posts that will talk about the benefits of the Wonderware solution that was installed at the power plants of the Bermuda Electric Light Company (BELCO).
The success story at BELCO is worth telling as it showcases what can be done by a utilities company that provides electricity to the residents and visitors of Bermuda, a chain of 181 islands stretched over 20 miles in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Imagine yourself being a power provider in an island where the nearest land mass is over 700 miles away. You have all this technology and equipment and you're a long way from everything else. It's important to be self sufficient and have all the resources to provide a secure, reliable and sustainable electric power system.
Reliability and Ease of use
One of the main goals of BELCO is to provide reliable electric power to the entire island chain. When BELCO chose Wonderware software products, starting with the InTouch® Human Machine Interface (HMI) in 1995, they were planning for the future. They wanted to ensure that the utility company could operate consistently for the long term.Since 1995, BELCO has been able to grow with Wonderware. The ease of use of the Wonderware products has enabled BELCO to tie everything together very cleanly and without a lot of assistance. This is important because the main challenge that they faced is Bermuda's remote location: It is an island chain in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where external support is not quick and sometimes not possible.
How have they done it? The answer is the powerful Wonderware System Platform. This scalable technology has enabled BELCO to integrate and unify various operations management systems, including recently added and legacy devices.
"The major advantage we’ve experienced is that it’s very easy to develop and integrate the Wonderware software with the wide variety of equipment we have here. Plus their support is global and very timely."
— John Blizman, Vice President, Plant Management
I'll be explaining a lot more in the succeeding posts how System Platform, InTouch, Wonderware Historian and IntelaTrac were used at BELCO and more importantly, I'll be talking about the benefits that they got from using these products.
More Information
In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more, you can check out the following cool sites:
- The BELCO Success Story in the Invensys website has all the details of the Wonderware solution
- The new InTouch page where you'll learn about how to get more out of your HMI through a Wonderware Historian
- The Wonderware Historian videos where you'll find out how it provides greater insight into your processes
- Finally, there's the System Platform product page that explains how it'll help you do it better, faster, safer and cheaper
Take care,
Jay
