Yokogawa Releases Enhanced Version of STARDOM™ Network-based Control SystemYokogawa Releases Enhanced Version of STARDOM™ Network-based Control System

ELECTRONICS: Yokogawa Electric Corp. announced the release of an enhanced version of the STARDOM™ Network-based Control System with upgraded engineering functionality. A new engineering tool facilitates the construction of field digital communications networks that can reduce the cost of maintaining production equipment distributed over wide areas.

In response to growing global energy demand, oil companies have been expanding their oil and gas exploration activities in recent years. As gas and oil field production equipment is often distributed over very wide areas, periodic field equipment inspections and other maintenance activities have proven very costly and pose a huge financial burden on these companies. One solution to this problem is the use of digital communication networks. By linking widely distributed production equipment, they make it possible to capture and centrally manage maintenance information such as individual device status and maintenance history. This reduces costs by improving maintenance efficiency.

For this latest STARDOM version, Yokogawa has optimized its existing engineering tool that is used to configure large-scale SCADA systems based on the FOUNDATION™ ^{fieldbus protocol. The new tool, FOUNDATION fieldbus Configurator, enables a 60 percent reduction in engineering man-hours (compared to our previous tool). In addition to this new tool, STARDOM’s Logic Designer engineering tool for creating control applications has been improved. An enhanced Distributed Network Protocol 3 (DNP3) is also provided.  STARDOM is an open network control system consisting of components with control, operation, and monitoring functionality. The autonomous controllers at the core of STARDOM have the same control and monitoring functions found in a PLC as well as the information distribution functions of a PC. They are widely used as intelligent remote terminal units (RTU) in distributed applications such as natural gas and oil wells. When used in combination, the FCN/FCJ autonomous controllers and FAST/FOOLS SCADA software give increased flexibility in distributed applications.}

Applications include monitoring, operation, control, and data acquisition/recording for production equipment distributed over a wide area.

-Edited by Kelsey Anderson