Is it possible to use the area active alarm and alarm priority to trigger an audible alarm in DV 14.3? Reading books online and testing some options in Live I can read the active alarm "DLSYS.Read("AREA_A/ALARMS[1].F_NALM")" and the alarm priority "DLSYS.Read("AREA_A/ALARMS[1].F_PRI")", however I have not found any documentation indicating I can get AREA level alarm information within a control module. I assume this information can be written from the graphics back to a module, however there is concern on how reliable / deterministic this approach would be. Are there any options I have overlooked or documentation someone can point me towards to provide a solution? We do not want to go down the path of building a control module that has all of the alarm conditions for each of the 10+ oven units as this will become a maintenance issue and time sink for any changes. That is why we would like to link the triggering of the audible alarm directly to the "critical" (> priority 11) for the area. We have taken this approach in our ABB system, but haven't figured it out in DeltaV. Any help or guidance is appreciated.
Stefan Müllner Senior Plant Engineer - Automation & Systems
KremsChem Austria GmbH
In reply to Stefan Muellner:
In reply to Jesse Delanoy:
Rereading the question, you are wanting to generate an Area level HORN signal rather than an Operator span of control HORN Signal. The Operator Station drives the HORN based on THISUSER/ALARMS[1], which does not give you the granularity you seek for the Audible alarms you want to generate per Area. The suggestion by Istvan to use a Unit module provides a controller based mechanism for alarm groupings, however, after testing, the Unit/Alarms or EquipModule/Alarms parameters only return alarm information on their own alarms. The contained module alarms do not roll up into these /Alarms parameters. I thought they did, but after some testing, this is not the case. I have an EM with modules beneath assigned as private. Modules in alarm do not show up in the EM/ALARMS [1] parameter or the em/ALARMS parameter. I created a Unit with a Phase and a contained module and forced a alarm condition. The Module Alarm does not show in the UNIT/ALARMS parameter.
The console U$ unit references will show the contained module alarms in its ALARMS[1] parameter, allowing for Unit level groupings of alarms within the plant area and to silence alarms by Unit groupings, but this is console resident information from the alarm system.
My original post stated the Unit/Alarms could be used in the control module to view the highest priority alarm by Unit to drive the DO horn. I decided to remove that rather then create a new post. I figure someone could read that post and not realize a subsequent post was created.
Anyway, the Module level /ALARMS parameter can be used in a control module to see the highest priority alarm and its Acknowledge state. One would need to explicitly read all modules and determine the highest priority via an expression.
The HORN parameter reflects the total span of control of the console. To know the alarm priority by UNIT, the U$ syntax could be used in a script, but a write to the controller would be needed. Such writes will cause a record in the EJournal and an Upload record in the Powerup folder of the Pro Plus. To avoid records in the Ejournal, the DO module(s) could be in a separate, unassigned Plant Area. The Upload records are accumulated in the module's PWR file and can be discarded periodically.
Sorry for the misdirection on the controller based alarm information.
Andre Dicaire