—

Open Automation
in hydropower

As the hydropower market changes, the

ABB Ability™ Symphony® Plus
distributed control system is the
perfect partner for customers on their
journey towards Open Automation.

— —
Open Automation initiatives are
revolutionizing the status quo of
today’s control systems, as an
answer to the many challenges
that the hydropower industry must
overcome.
Being an early adopter of these
initiatives, and utilizing the IEC 104
protocol, the hydropower industry
has taken the first steps to
address these issues.
O p e n A u to m at i o n i s t h e f u t u r e 3
Open Automation is the future
Global industries agree that Open Automation is
the way forward, and the reason is simple. Open
standards prevent end users from being locked
An open and interoperable control system uses
Open Automation interfaces and standards that
are independent of any vendor. Vendors retain
into closed proprietary control systems, which do
not integrate (or poorly integrate) components
from other vendors. Typically, a controller from
intellectual property of their hardware and
software, but the interfaces connecting them are
open. This allows end users to use components
vendor A is incompatible with an I/O system from
vendor B, and it not interoperable with control
system components of other vendors. The end
and devices from multiple vendors on any
platform. Products are selected based on fit and/
or performance, regardless of vendor, improving
user is confined to the vendor’s control system efficiency, lowering lifecycle costs increasing
and control products, affecting costs and choice and competition, as well as fostering
efficiency. innovation.
—
01 Connecting and
interfacing electrical
equipment, systems
and remote sites can be
a complex puzzle in the
hydro market, solved
easily by adopting
open standards.
4 O p e n A u t o m at io n i n h y d r o p o w e r

—
ABB champions
Open Automation
ABB has long been an initiator of and leader in
Open Automation. We played a key role in
developing the IEC 61850 standard for substation
automation and component interoperability,
after which we delivered the world’s first
substation to use that standard. We were also one
of five founding members of the FDT Group to
develop open standards for integrating devices
with networks, operating systems and control
systems.

We were an early member of the Open Process

Automation Forum (OPAF) – a driver of Open
Automation since 2016. We also work actively in
other organizations, such as the Open
Connectivity Framework (O-PAS), Namur Open
Architecture and Modular Automation. We worked
with a leading chemical company to successfully
demonstrate that multi-vendor Open Automation
can work in batch processes in the chemical
industry. We are also collaborating with other end
users across industries on pilot and proof-of-
concept projects in various Open Automation
aspects.

As the global leader in distributed control

systems (DCS), we recognize the need to make
Open Automation possible for our customers. We
believe it will take control systems to a new level,
allowing free flow of data between devices and
systems of different vendors. It will enable end
users to easily move intellectual property
between different automation components and
systems (known as portability) – a key
requirement of many companies. And it will have
cyber security built into all aspects of the
standard, rather than bolted on as an add-on,
which is partly the case today. In short, Open
Automation will become the “standard of
standards” for open, interoperable, and secure
automation.
6 O p e n A u t o m at io n i n h y d r o p o w e r

—
IEC 104 – The first step towards
Open Automation

— Bringing Open Automation to fruition still has
02 Itaipu Hydroelectric
Dam on the Parana River some way to go. But in terms of interoperability
in South America. between multiple vendors’ devices it has been
operating successfully for many years through
the IEC 60870-5-104 protocol.
IEC 104, as it is commonly known, was released in
2000 for telecontrol equipment and systems. It
provides telemetry communication between a
controlling station, such as a SCADA control room
and control stations, such as remote facilities or
substations. This makes it ideal for applications
in hydropower, where a central control room
supervises several unmanned stations over a
large area by using programmable logic
controllers (PLC) or a SCADA system. In fact, one
of the early drivers and adopters of IEC 104 was
the hydropower industry in Brazil and South
America.
Hydropower is by far the region’s largest source
of electricity. It accounts for two-thirds of power
generation in Central and South America, and
three-quarters in Brazil. Four of the world’s
largest hydropower plants are in Brazil, with a
fifth in Venezuela. Hydropower is, as the
International Energy Agency recently reminded
us, “the forgotten giant of clean electricity.” It
provides 16 percent of the world’s renewable
electricity, compared to 5 percent by wind and
less than 3 percent by solar photovoltaic.
The adoption of an open standard of
communication and interoperability across the
region was driven by transmission system
operators (TSOs) and hydropower plant owners.
At the time, the hydropower market was
fragmented, with plants usually supplied by
multiple, often local, vendors. It was not
uncommon for one vendor to supply turbine
control, another excitation and a third control
monitoring. As a result, there were numerous
suppliers whose control equipment did not
communicate with each other.

—
03 Current and Global net hydropower capacity by region, 2000 - 2030
projected growth of 1000
hydropower until 2030.
900
Source: www.iea.org

800
—
700 It was evident that a common platform or protocol was
600
needed. The TSOs required better communication of
data to balance supply with demand across the
GW

500

400

300
transmission grid. Plant owners required better control
200 of their assets through interoperability. IEC 104 met
100
both requirements – to such an extent that around 80
0

2000 2010 2020 2030

percent of the region’s hydropower plants are
China Europe and North America Africa and Middle East Latin America Asia Pacific estimated to use the protocol. —
02
8 O p e n A u t o m at io n i n h y d r o p o w e r
— —
Main features of IEC 104
A global standard developed by the leading international
standards organization for electrical and electronic technologies
– International Electrotechnical Commision.
Enables communication between a central control room and
geographically distributed (and often unmanned) hydropower
plants via a standard telemetry network (TCP/IP), which allows
simultaneous data transmission between different devices.
Enables interoperability between different devices supplied by
different vendors.
Operates in low bandwidth applications, such as remote
hydropower stations, where the capacity of the communication
network for transmitting data is often limited.
Retains and stores data whenever there is a disruption in the
communication signals between devices or remote plant and the
central control room.
IEC 104 has been extremely beneficial for the hydropower
sector, improving interoperability between devices, control
and electrical equipment; providing logical access to data; and
controlling aging installed electrical equipment.
Yet, the challenge is not to just settle for a “standardized”
protocol to interface from control system to devices, but
instead to reach the ultimate goal of a common language
where different components and devices natively understand
each other.
T h e f i r s t O p e n A u to m at i o n p l at f o r m 9
The first Open Automation platform
ABB recently released a new version of its ABB Better engineering efficiency
Ability™ Symphony Plus® platform that includes When data is tied into Symphony Plus, a unique
not only IEC 104 protocol capabilities but a true object – a “digital twin”– is created. The digital
IEC 104 backbone that is designed specifically to twin has its own label or “tags,” and aspects or
meet current and future needs of the hydropower “atoms.” It serves to group all relevant atoms
industry. (i.e metadata) of the object.
Having all components of Symphony Plus natively With IEC 104 as the backbone, the system can
communicating over IEC 104 leverages many ingest all relevant data from different devices,
additional key benefits: equipment and system parts that uses IEC 104 in
their database. As the system is natively speaking
Simplified communication IEC 104, the engineering workflow is implied, as
This eliminates the need for gateways or other the system supports direct configuration of the
protocol converters, providing a solution to the tags and atoms of the digital twins, as opposed
challenge of mapping all device data to the to manually import every object.
master database.
It diminishes the risk of inconsistencies as no
extra tags must be created in the control system
to retrieve data. It adds flexibility as nodes can
interface directly with each other.
—
04 Reduced engi-
neering efforts by
utilizing IEC104 when
interpreting device data,
structuring the data and
creating digital twins. Data Signal
ABB Ability™
Symphony® Plus
Digital Metadata
twin
10 O p e n A u t o m at io n i n h y d r o p o w e r
Improved control
Control commands to the remote sites do not
have to be issued by a local controller but can be
issued from any system node (e.g. central control
room).
Robust and reliable communication
Usage of IEC 104 telemetry capability is ideal for
remote sites. As the system uses IEC 104 natively
in the backbone for communication and supports
IEC 104 redundancy, it is able to easily recover
from disruptive and low bandwidth
communications.
ABB Ability™ Symphony® Plus
When the Symphony control system was first
launched nearly 40 years ago, it was based on the
principles of openness, flexibility, and scalability.
We supported it with a policy of evolution
without obsolescence, meaning that every new
generation of the system enhances its
predecessors and is backwardly compatible with
them.
This approach enables generations of Symphony
users to upgrade components and software or
expand the system incrementally to match their
needs and budget. They never need to rip out and
replace the entire system. Symphony Plus is
customer-centric and budget-friendly, allowing
you to continuously adopt initiatives as Open
Automation by updating to the latest version.
This user and budget friendliness has struck a
chord with the power industry.
Of the more than 7,500 Symphony
Plus control systems in operation
worldwide, over 5,000 are in
power and water applications,
including hydropower.
T h e f i r s t O p e n A u to m at i o n p l at f o r m
— hierarchical – the latter favored by fleet
What does
Symphony® Plus
provide to the
hydropower industry?
Support for open standard protocols
Hydropower plants just like any power or water
plant are very far from using one protocol of
communication, hence the need for control
systems to connect through other means.
Symphony Plus seamlessly integrates remote
sites, PLCs, controllers, electrical systems and
intelligent devices. It supports open standards
and industrial protocols, including OPC, Modbus
TCP, IEC 61850 and IEC 104.
11
Flexible deployment and easily scalable
Symphony Plus offers a flexible architecture,
covering a wide range of SCADA applications.
These architectures range from single node and
serverless to segregated, multi-master and
applications, such as hydropower.
The system offers flexibility of deployment and
enables growth, where it is easy to expand and
scale as needed. It also supports further
flexibility, enabling users to choose from one
control system backbone to another. As a result,
system users can choose the backbone that best
meets each requirement. For instance, they can
use the IEC 104 backbone to communicate with
remote plants while simultaneously using the
DCS backbone to maximize their use of plant data
for continuous monitoring of critical equipment
and preventive maintenance.
12 O p e n A u t o m at io n i n h y d r o p o w e r
Communication loss recovery
Symphony Plus incorporates store and forward
functionality at each level to ensure that no data
is lost in the event of a break in
telecommunications signals. When
communication is disrupted, the system stores
the data to be transmitted. Once communication
is re-established, data is forwarded to the human
machine interface (HMI) and Historian servers,
filling the gaps. No data is lost.
— effectively, an operator should be presented with
05 SPC700 controller
SPC700 - Controller designed specifically for IEC
104 and hydropower
With built-in time synchronization and data
buffering, the controller is available in single or
redundant configuration. The SPC700 is designed
with multiple ethernet ports, redundant ethernet
ports dedicated for IEC 104, a SNTP time sync
network port and a Modbus TCP ethernet port.
Operators, managers, engineers, and
maintenance staff can personalize their
workplace, and ensure they are presented with
critical information, in the proper context. For
operations and maintenance, this leads to greater
detection of abnormal situations.
Alarm management tools and analysis
Many times, operators are flooded with alarms
and can lose visibility of where their attention is
most needed. According to the ISA 18.2 standard,
in order to provide adequate time to respond
no more than one to two alarms every ten
minutes. Their ability to make the correct
decision at the right time has an immediate
effect on productivity, safety, and reliability.
Symphony Plus provides the right tools to
improve your current alarm system according to
the ISA SP18.2 and EEmuA 191 guidelines. By
using statistical reports, nuisance alarms can be
identified and removed. Moreover, by using alarm
handling capabilities, such as alarm hiding or
shelving, the operator can focus on the right
alarms.
Comprehensive and easy navigation
Our S+ Operations HMI presents data from
multiple disparate sources in the same consistent
and familiar operator environment, regardless
of the underlying protocol.
Information is presented in the context of a
digital twin (tags and atoms), allowing the
operator to bring up the right information
without the need for additional interactions.
As the SPC700 has been designed with native IEC
104 protocol capabilities it supports multiple
setups. It can either be an IEC 104 Master
connecting up to 16 slaves or an IEC 104 Slave
connecting up to 8 Masters.
T h e f i r s t O p e n A u to m at i o n p l at f o r m
Integrated geographical
information system (GIS)
Hydropower plants have many remote sites, small
systems, and geographically distributed control
rooms. When supervising, monitoring, or
controlling these plants a geographical
visualization is key to efficient operations and
maintenance.
Symphony Plus includes an integrated GIS in the
HMI, which allows alarm visualization and easy
cross-navigation between the GIS and process
objects.
—
06 Intuitive Geo-
graphical Information
System (GIS) navigation
for more effective
remote operations.
Remote operations
On-site operations and maintenance staff can
access real-time and historical data
simultaneously from any portable device. In
multi-hierarchal architectures, there is not always
a person on-site, but in the occurrence of an event
if the user is locally available on a system and
would like to give control or take control from a
central control room the system needs to track
and manage user access. In Symphony Plus, users
can be assigned jurisdiction over one or more
plants, or given temporary access to execute
specific control commands.
Engineering – minimum changes, maximum
reuse
Engineering accounts for a significant cost of an
automation system. Symphony Plus makes
engineering simple, streamlined, and repeatable.
It offers all the necessary functionality needed to
engineer, configure, manage, secure, commission
and maintain every component in the control
system. Changes made at one point are repeated
throughout the system, greatly reducing time,
effort, and cost of engineering.
13
Edge computing and big data analytics
Symphony Plus is primed for future developments
in digitalization and the Industrial Internet of
Things (IIoT). It enables data collection or storage
either in the cloud (a datacenter) or on the edge
(on-premises), or both – per company security
requirements. It also allows users to visualize and
understand data in real time and translate it into
timely and accurate decisions that improve plant
or network performance.
Built-in security
Symphony Plus is designed with inherent cyber
security features to ensure a secure and reliable
control environment with minimal time and
effort. In addition to complying with U.S. Critical
Infrastructure Protection (CIP), NERC standards
and regulations, and the IEC 62351-8 security
standard, Symphony Plus defines rights and roles
for a user or user groups with very fine
granularity and provides sophisticated
authorization and role-based access control to
ensure a tight guard against unwanted activities.
To increase stability, security and robustness in
its solutions, ABB has long operated an
independent Device Security Assurance Center
(DSAC), where cyber security robustness is tested
as part of the product development process. All
Symphony Plus ethernet-based devices are
continually tested at DSAC in different
configurations and with explicit focus on
operational performance.
14 O p e n A u t o m at io n i n h y d r o p o w e r
— —
What lies ahead in Open Automation
and the hydropower market?
OPAF and other Open Automation initiatives are
making rapid progress to develop interoperable,
plug-and-play automation. The goal is to develop
a standards-based, open, secure and
interoperable process control architecture that
can integrate multiple control, safety, enterprise
and other systems. Unfortunately this will not
happen tomorrow but is likely to take several
years.
As devices, equipment and systems become
smarter, and get replaced and upgraded, the
capability to connect and the availability of data
will increase dramatically. The IEC104 protocol
struggles in managing large amount of data
which opens the door to other more modern
protocols as the emerging OPC UA protocol which
most probably be the future standard of choice.
OPC UA has also the advantage to be natively
built to include cybersecurity features to ensure a
—
In the meantime, IEC104 is the adopted standard as an immediate
answer to address most of the challenges in the hydropower market:
Interfacing aged Communicate to
electrical different sites
equipment over large
distances while
being able to
recover from
interruptions
Symphony® Plus, already well-positioned in Open
Automation, supports you throughout the transition
towards OPC UA. ABB will facilitate your Open
Automation journey through technology changes with
IEC 104 incorporated in the system backbone.
reliable and secure communication.
Nevertheless, for OPC UA to be completely
adopted, the challenge of having a reliable
communication infrastructure still remains. Edge
computing, 5G and time-sensitive networks
(TSN) are technologies that will contribute to the
adoption of OPC UA as a reliable communication
infrastructure. However, there are still several
years before this technology is made available
and deployed into the hydropower market. OPC
UA is expected to be more adopted as we move
into the future but today will be adopted in
parallel to IEC104 for the next coming years.
ABB is committed to be your partner in mitigating
the hydro market challenges and will support any
older Symphony Plus® systems to evolve with
minimal efforts and cost to integrate IEC104 and
future protocols to come.
Large data More secure
ingestion for communication
diagnostics and protocols
analytics supporting
encryption and
point to point
certification
 References
—
References
Zambia, 2015, Kafue Gorge
hydropower station
Modernizing countries largest hydropower plant
automation system
Maximized production and reliability at Zambia’s biggest
power plant – 990 MW Kafue Gorge hydropower station with
remote operation of the hydro facility located 10 km from
plant. The Symphony Plus control system manages six 165
MW units, provides an interface with the turbine governor
system, and controls the plant auxiliaries, start and stop
sequences, electrical components and plant substation.
ABB`s scope of supply includes supply, design, engineering,
installation and commissioning of the control system.
Taiwan, 2019, Takuan hydropower plant
Upgrade century-old hydropower plant
Revamp and transform century-old turbine system with
SCADA automation and turbine governor control and
protection system.
Video link
Canada, 2014, Jenpeg hydropower plant
Hydro turbine retrofit
ABB retrofitted one of six turbines at the 129 MW Jenpeg
hydropower plant on the Nelson River in Manitoba. Owned
and operated by Manitoba Hydro, Jenpeg regulates the
outflow waters of Lake Winnipeg for power production at
the company’s Nelson River generating stations.
ABB supplied a customized and fully integrated
instrumentation, control and electrical (ICE) solution for
Unit 1 of the Jenpeg generating station. ABB provided
Jenpeg with a portfolio of lifecycle services, including spare
parts and equipment repair, training, remote monitoring
and technical support and the scope of supply includes a full
excitation system, relay-based control and synchronization,
a protection system, a customized medium-voltage
generator terminal cubicle and ABB HVR generator circuit
breaker, ABB governor controller and manifold, and power
control cables.
17
Vietnam, 2014, Vinh Son hydropower
plant
Total hydropower control system retrofit with
Symphony Plus
ABB retrofitted an obsolete Alstom – Jeumont Cegelec
control system for Saigon Ban Mai Commercial Company
Ltd.’s 2 x 33 MW Vinh Son hydropower plant, located at Binh
Dinh central province’s Vinh Thanh mountainous districts of
Vietnam.
Operated by Vinh Son-Song Hinh Hydropower Joint Stock
Company, the plant helps to mitigate the tight power supply
situation in the area. ABB completed design, engineering,
supply, installation and commissioning of the Symphony™
Plus control system, based on the HPC800 controller.
Brazil, 2020, Funil Hydropower plant
Complete Symphony™ Plus retrofit
Funil Hydropower plant, is a conventional hydroelectric
power station administered by
Aliança Geração de Energia S.A., a partnership between Vale
and Cemig.
The Funil Plant has an installed capacity of 180MW (3 x60
MW) with 89 MW of assured average energy in operation.
The plant is located on the Rio Grande, which belongs to the
Rio Paraná basin, in southern Minas Gerais, between the
municipalities of Perdões and Lavras where the plant helps
to mitigate the tight power supply situation in the area.
ABB completed design, engineering, supply, installation and
Factory acceptance testing of the Symphony™ Plus control
system, based on the SPC700 controller with IEC104 control
network.
Brazil, 2019, Sao Domingos
hydropower plant
Complete Symphony™ Plus retrofit
Sao Domingos Hydropower plant, is a conventional
hydroelectric power located in Brazil with by installed
capacity of 15 MW with 7 MW of assured average energy in
operation.
ABB completed design, engineering, supply, installation and
commissioning of the Symphony™ Plus control system,
based on the SPC700 controller with IEC104 control
backbone network. This plant is monitored and controlled
remotely.
—
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