Honeywell has helped Dominion Energy, a customer for more than 15 years, continually improve performance and migrate to new technology while protecting investments in existing technology.
Dominion Energy turned to Honeywell for a long-term solution to help continually improve operational performance, manage costs and minimize downtime. Over a 15-year period, Honeywell has consistently proven to be a dependable provider of process control technology and service support solutions.
The implementation of Honeywell’s automation solutions has resulted in several benefits for Dominion, including:
Richmond, Virginia-based Dominion is one of the largest producers of energy in the Americas. The company’s asset portfolio consists of about 28,100 megawatts of power generation, 6,000 miles of electric transmission, about 6.3 trillion cubic feet equivalent of proved natural gas reserves, 7,800 miles of natural gas pipeline and the nation's largest natural gas storage system with about 950 billion cubic feet of storage capacity. Dominion also serves retail energy customers in nine U.S. states.
The company practices environmental stewardship and encourages partnerships with civic and environmental organizations, governmental agencies and educational institutions.
Dominion's strategy is to be a leading provider of electricity, natural gas and related services to customers in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the U.S., a potential market of 50 million homes and businesses where 40 percent of the nation’s energy is consumed. The challenge was to maintain its process and resource performance at an optimum level and protect investments in older automation systems while moving to new technology. The company also had to ensure that all its environmental commitments were met.
Honeywell is a preferred supplier to Dominion Energy New England for plant automation products and services. The company has been a customer with Honeywell for over 15 years. Some of the Honeywell products and services used by the company are:
TDC 3000® Logic Manager™: Installed in 1990 for use as a batch controller, this system has been upgraded with enhancements to keep it current with the latest technology. This has resulted in a high confidence level among operations and management, not only for the reliability and robustness of Honeywell systems, but also how Honeywell protects the customer’s investment.
Uniformance® PHD: Originally intended as a plant historian to gather and track reports and data to meet government regulations and requirements, Uniformance is now also used to monitor downtime and analyze plant performance.
Automation Services: As part of Honeywell’s Solution Enhancement Support Program (SESP), a site support specialist is on site three days a week at one plant and one day a week at two smaller plants to support Dominion’s engineering investment in graphics and database. SESP services also provide Dominion with a hot spare inventory which has helped minimize downtime.
Honeywell recently installed a combustion control system at the New England facilities. The implementation of all the upgrades had to be completed during the outage for regular maintenance. Honeywell was able to deliver on time and on budget, disconnecting 5,000 I/O and installing 8,000 wired, tested and loop-checked I/O back, all in eight weeks.
As part of Honeywell’s extensive customer feedback efforts, engineering staff at the New England facilities have been participants in Honeywell’s UIS since its formation in 1993. Participation began skeptically, but the company found that Honeywell takes recommendations from users very seriously. As a result, the UIS has become a valued resource to Dominion plant staff, giving plant personnel an official forum to express concerns and opinions, and suggest modifications and enhancements which are then diligently pursued to ensure a better product for all customers.
Honeywell is currently installing a new TDC system on Dominion’s new pollution equipment that will improve environmental friendliness and make it compliant with regulations. Honeywell’s integration expertise and familiarity with the plant systems makes this task easier.
TDC 3000® and Uniformance® are registered trademarks and Logic Manager™ is a trademark of Honeywell International Inc