Redundant, fault-tolerant control system for a 13 MW high speed drive

Variable speed drives in chemical and petrochemical plants need a high reliability and availability. Therefore redundancy is often realized in the power converter and other subsystems. For the control electronics an interesting solution may be a redundant, fault-tolerant control system, which can reduce the probability of an outage by a factor ten. An additional man machine communication system with comfortable help information in connection with a modular control system can reduce the repair time of a failed control, while the drive remains in operation on the other control channel. The author develops this concept which is based on experience gained by Asea Brown Boveri