Intelligent motor control, a definition and value add to process control

As technology continues to drive innovations, heavy industrial enterprises must continue to keep pace to remain competitive in and ever changing marketplace. The trend of technology is to replace systems of yesterday with higher performance, low-cost, option rich devices that shorten the return on investment and offer more flexibility. As control system technology continues to evolve, we see this same migration in the way many functions are being increasingly distributed to smarter, more granular, control system components capable of performing localized operations that were once the responsibility of a central or master controller. The integration of intelligent devices, device level networks, and interrogation software into medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) motor control centers is a good example of how technology can deliver improved diagnostics, early warnings for increased system reliability, design flexibility, simplified wiring and provide another level of personnel safety for process industries. This paper focuses on technology integration, intelligent devices and device level information collection to provide convergence of control and information for plant wide optimization.