Award for "unleashing the power of Hart"

A Hart Communication Foundation product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 24, 2003

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department in Detroit, Michigan, has been selected as the Hart Plant of the Year for 2003.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) in Detroit, Michigan, has been selected as the Hart Plant of the Year for 2003.

The award is given annually to recognise success in the innovative use of Hart communication technology in real-time process applications.

"We congratulate Detroit Water and Sewerage for unleashing the power of their Hart-enabled devices to achieve real-time operational improvements", says Hart Communication Foundation Executive Director Ron Helson.

"Their innovative use of Hart-enabled plant instrumentation serves as a powerful model for industry users worldwide: a working illustration of how to realise far greater benefits from Hart than ever before".

DWSD uses the power of Hart communication in daily operations to eliminate metering disputes, improve system reliability, and streamline operations.

"We determined that Hart would provide the best solution for several reasons.

Hart minimised the additional investment we had to make, since most of the existing instrumentation was Hart-capable and could use existing wiring", says DWSD Head Engineer Dennis Green.

"Hart is a stable protocol posing a low compatibility risk for planned expansions.

And, Hart allowed us to digitally extract secondary variables and diagnostic information, while the intelligence built into the HART instruments enabled them to perform calculations, freeing computing power in higher-level platforms for other tasks".

Green says.

Hart (highway addressable remote transducer) technology is the globally accepted standard and most widely used digital communication protocol for industrial process and manufacturing operations.

Well over two-thirds of all smart instruments communicate using Hart and more than 12 million Hart-capable devices are installed worldwide.

"Automation suppliers are now delivering Hart-enabled system solutions that leverage the intelligence in Hart-smart devices for real-time advanced device diagnostics and process information", says Helson.

"Real-time connections are the key to unleashing the power of installed Hart devices to improve plant operations, increase system availability, lower maintenance costs and aid regulatory compliance".

Other networking technologies have matured considerably since 1996, when DWSD began piloting its system.

Nevertheless, Green says that he would still use Hart, even if the project were beginning today.

"I know these newer fieldbus technologies are the hot thing right now, but it could have cost us twice as much money", Green says.

"Hart does the job for us, and it's done on our standard equipment that was already installed - you don't pay extra for it.

It certainly was ideal for what we wanted to do".

DWSD developed and implemented an extensive automatic meter reading/supervisory control and data acquisition (AMR/Scada) system, a $10 million piece of a major infrastructure upgrade project that relies on the power of Hart communication to deliver consistent, reliable data on system performance.

DWSD integrated a vast array of diverse field devices and technologies onto a single networked system to take full advantage of Hart's digital communication capabilities.

Cebrace Cristal Plano, a plate and specialty glass manufacturer in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was selected as a 2003 Hart Plant of the Year finalist.

Both companies will be recognised at the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society trade show, ISA Expo 2003, in Houston, Texas, on 21st October 2003.