Choosing PCS7 DCS for steam power plant


Thread Starter


Hello to all,
there were threads recently that discussed similar topics.

In one thread many agreed that PCS 7 can be considered as DCS and it is used in many area of technology and process control. Yet, there were other threads that mention explicitely that Siemens developed special DCS for power plants such as SPPA -T1000, T2000 and T3000.

I wonder why PCS 7 is not used as DCS for power plants? I know that there is PCS7 additional library with symbols often used in power plants.
I also know that there are systems for breweries and cement industries (Braumat and CEMAT). I have no experience with these systems but I think that they are based on PCS7.

Can anyone tell me why PCS 7 is not good choice for power plants and what its main target is?

PCS7 is a perfectly good product and has/would work well in power plants. It's just that Siemens have made the political decision that in power plants SPPA-T3000 will be implemented. T3000 uses the hardware platform of the S7 product range just the engineering and HMI is different. It is argued that the top end has been tailored to suit the power plant application. In the last couple of years Siemens PG did actually roll out PCS7 on several smaller power plants including the governor control and failsafe protection systems but this was more of a stop gap when the S5 system became obsolete and before the T3000 was released.

PCS7 is designed to be a platform that can be used in multiple industries and has wide use in pharm, oil and gas, etc.

Basic answer is politics.
Hmm, that is very interesting. I have found some basics information about Siemens' DCS systems from cement industry (CEMAT), Brewery (BRAUMAT). It is described as Siemens have standard solutions for different types of industry. I didn't see each system in practice, but from what I found, it seems that it is PCS7 with some additional software libraries (especially for HMI part) and nothing more. That is why began asking myself why they didn't choose similar solution for power plants.
Comparable to the CEMAT or BRAUMAT library is the PPL (Premium Plant Library) for PCS7. This library is design for use in power plants.

It is a third party product (not from Siemens).