Emerson Exchange 365

DeltaV Excel Add-In issue

Hi,

We've noticed using DVRead function in the Excel, that for 3000+ parameters report gets sometimes #N/A values. It happens usually for few random parameters, however form time to time ~30% parameters are with #N/A. Workaround is to restart Excel few times. GSD can't help us for almost 6months with that issue, therefore we are looking for some replacement. So far we have found solution form Matrikon and OPCExpert, but both of them have their disadvantages. We've found as well "=RTD" function in Excel. Does anyone has used it for fetching OPC values from DeltaV, without installation any additional service, except the one from DeltaV Excel add-in?

We thought #N/A might be server issue, but then we've installed Excel on another application station and issue has reoccurred again. The same issue is on our development system as well.

Our setup is: DeltaV 14.3.1 with latest patches on application station, where Excel (2016 32bit) is installed

Regards

Sebastian

Sebastian

• 31 Aug 2021 6:02 AM
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4 Replies

• Andre Dicaire

  

  • 2 Sep 2021 7:57 PM

  Excel Addin connects to an OPC Server, which will be licensed for x number of items, or OPC tags. This would have to be an Application station as workstations are limited to the 500 OPC tags of the Excel Addin license. An App station can be licensed to 30250 OPC Tags.
  
  In diagnostics, you can see how many items are currently being used by OPC Clients and if this exceeds the licensed number for the server, the client requests are rejected by the server. By shutting down Excel, you allow the OPC Server to remove the associated items and make them available.
  
  If you are consuming OPC Items with different applications, or with different Excel Reports, it may be that items are not being released before another report or application is trying to create more items, which result in the #N/A response.
  
  Check Diagnostics on the OPC Server to make sure licensed count is not being exceeded. You can see the number of clients connected to the server and the items per client. If these are dynamic (Excel reports that are launched and closed), you may need to provide more time between reports to allow the items to be pruned before the next report connects to the server.

  Andre Dicaire

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• Sebastian

  

  • 30 Sep 2021 11:50 AM

  In reply to Andre Dicaire:

  Hi,
  We are utilizing OPC tags only for reporting purposes. In Diagnostics I can see that we use no more than 18000 points out of 20250 available. Issue for sure is not related to the licensing. BTW there is a message if we exceed a number of OPC values and it is not "#N/A"

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• MPHymel

  

  • 30 Sep 2021 2:09 PM

  In reply to Sebastian:

  That addin is a little buggy. I found that it will not release OPC tags. Try closing excel (and check in task manager to make sure that no excels are running). Try to re-open your spreadsheet and see if any improvements are seen. I have this problem when opening a succession of reports, or multiple reports at a time. I'd suggest maybe breaking up your report into smaller reports to limit the number of OPC reads your executing copy and save values, then open the next section of your report and repeat.

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• Sebastian

  

  • 1 Oct 2021 5:58 AM

  In reply to MPHymel:

  Release of OPC tags is fixed once latest hotfix is installed. We don't have an issue with that anymore. Restarting an Excel sometimes helps, but to collect 18k tags report takes around 15min, so repeating a report collection is very time consuming. Dividing a report to small peace's is a kind of solution, but we paid quite a lot of money for a licenses of additional 4x5000 OPC tags. Funny thing was, with DV 11.3.1 and old Excel Addin all was working fine. We think current (redesigned addin) should be fixed by Emerson, we reported an issue, but in Guardian we can see logs, which suggesting Emerson tries to find a limitation of Excel addin instead of reason why it is not working and fix it :-(
  We think the last option for us will be a try to install an old Excell Addin available with DV11.3.1 DVD's

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