Fail_Alarm on Momentary Device Control points

At a plant site, I have come across a large number of Device Control points that have their Fail_alm disabled. These are momentary points and when I enable the points, the fail alarm is pretty much always active (even though the confirmed/desired states are correct). Any thoughts as to what we can do to make the alarm come in when there is an actual failure?

  • Have you looked at the DC block device options (DEVICE_OPTS)? There are two parameters that may be of interest when you momentarily energize an output to achieve an Active state:

    Passive when Confirmed — When the Passive when Confirmed option is enabled (True) and the field device is confirmed to the desired Active state, OUT_D is changed to the Passive state.
    Passive on Active Timeout — When the Passive on Active Time-out option is enabled (True) and an Active state is not confirmed within the confirm time following a command to an Active state, OUT_D is changed to the Passive state.

    There are several different conditions that may cause FAIL_ACTIVE to be true.  When FAIL_ACTIVE is true, what is the value of FAIL parameter for the DC block?