ABB Wins Alarm Management Service Contract for Swedish Power Station

ABB’s global engineering and consulting group has been enlisted by utility giant E.ON to work on a green field energy plant in Sweden

E.ON’s Swedish subsidiary has awarded a contract to ABB to ensure its new Combined Heat and Power (CHP) facility, on the outskirts of Stockholm, is set up to run efficiently and safely through implementing a world class alarm management system.

ABB will oversee alarm management at the CHP Högbytorp site and is tasked with ensuring compliance against the latest industry standards and guidance. This includes creating the alarm philosophy document, educating staff, rationalising all of the alarms, assisting in the design of the Human Machine Interface (HMI), testing the alarm systems and creating documentation which will assist the operations team to manage the alarm system. The contract is expected to run until the end of 2019.

E.ON is investing almost £220m in a new 25 megawatt waste-to-energy plant in northwest Stockholm, made up of the CHP facility and a biogas plant.

The site is adjacent to a recycling centre, making it a ‘closed loop’ waste-to-energy system. The biogas facility is expected to become operational next year, with the CHP plant on track to open in 2019, producing electricity and heat for Stockholm’s growing population.

ABB will be involved in reviewing and shaping the design of alarms proposed for the site and evaluating E.ON’s existing approach to alarm systems. It will also run training sessions for staff and suppliers involved in the project to educate them, illustrating best practice and the latest international standards and guidance on alarm systems.

Other responsibilities include alarm system maintenance, assisting with required tests and ensuring the alarms adhere to the latest standards, including IEC 62682 and EEMUA 191.

Integral to the project will be ABB’s AlarmInsight® software suite, which includes the Alarm Rationalisation Tool (ART). Other tools in the software suite allow users to access an alarm system’s record and view its performance in real time, pattern matching and other sophisticated algorithms that predict performance and measure dependency.

As ABB’s Aatif Hashmi explained, the firm’s work with E.ON will extend far beyond simply providing intuitive alarm management technology.

“We believe good alarm system performance cannot be provided only by technology,” said the senior alarm management consultant. “Equally it cannot be sustained solely by the engagement of external consultants and vendors. Good, sustained, performance is achievable through informed and motivated management of the system by the system owner.

ABB’s approach is therefore to work with the client to engage, educate and coach their staff to the point where the system is managed and operated in a compliant, effective and sustainable fashion.”

ABB is a leading authority in alarm management, having worked in the field for over 20 years and contributed to key industry guidance such as EEMUA 191.

The company has trained over a thousand engineers in alarm management and provided alarm improvement services for numerous greenfield and brownfield projects globally