One of the exciting improvements coming in Ovation 4.0 is a significant overhaul to the human machine interface (HMI). The rise of renewables, and their integration into more and more power generation portfolios has made operations more complex than ever. Consequently, HMIs have had to evolve alongside to give operators access to their wide scope of operations without slowing them down or causing confusion via information overload.
As Emerson’s Scott Szymanski shared in his demo of the Ovation View HMI, the new software rises to meet that challenge. The Ovation View HMI is full of new features to help operators design the optimal displays for their unique operations, while still maintaining the core capabilities that have kept Ovation the leader of the pack in power system controls for so many years.
New features improve usability
What users will notice first and foremost is Ovation 4.0’s modern looking web-based graphics. Users can create any graphics that suit their operating style, from high-performance 2D graphics that emphasize alarms to flashy, 3D-style graphics with animations. Even more important, however, are the wide range of key performance indicator dashboards—both available as default out of the box and also able to be custom built—that users can employ to keep close tabs on their real-time operations and long-term goals.
Further increasing the ease-of-use is Ovation View HMI’s extensive library of drag-and-drop widgets to draw tanks, valves, pipes, wind turbines, buttons, charts, gauges, and more. With so many pre-built options available out of the box, it is faster and easier to build graphics and provide new ways to visualize Ovation data, resulting in a more intuitive and attractive operator experience.
“If you’re artistic, you can make very three-dimensional shapes, but we also provide a lot of these features out of the box as well. If you need a three-dimensional tank, you don’t have to go through and configure all those gradients. A lot of it is built right into the widget.”
Ovation View HMI also provides a nod to the increasing use of remote operations, both in traditional and, especially, renewables operations. With the Ovation Data Hub, the same HTML displays created for local control room monitoring are also accessible for remote monitoring and control without any conversion process.
Consistency is key as well. Ovation View HMI supports global settings for elements such as colors, empowering a team to set a single color (or using one of the highly customizable gradients) for a specific widget type across all graphics, and making it easy to change those settings globally. For example, if a team has buttons set as red, but wants to change them to blue, it is easy to change that setting and push it out to every button created all at once.
Old favorites still front and center
Even with all the updates, experienced Ovation HMI users will still recognize the tools they have used for years. Ovation View HMI shares some of the best features of legacy graphics but incorporates new functionality, enhancements, and modernization that make it faster and easier to create, modify, and test graphics. Displays are still managed using Ovation Developer Studio, and legacy graphics and new displays can coexist on the same system, allowing for gradual, seamless transition to new designs.
“The old legacy graphics aren’t going away. If you want to keep using the legacy graphics, you’ll be able to do that, or if you want to slowly over time start using the new graphics, you can keep your old graphics and use those until you’re able to create all your new graphics. You can even implement a new system in ovation and do just that in the new graphics and keep your old graphics for everything else.”
Scott performed a number of demos to show the audience how quick and easy it is to create a new graphic with loads of flexibility—types, fills, color conditionals, animations, and more.
The post Looking at Ovation in a Whole New Way appeared first on the Emerson Automation Experts blog.