ABB Unveils Industrial Scale Wireless Condition Monitoring Solution for Rotating Equipment
June 30, 2020
ABB is participating in the HPE Discover Virtual Experience event beginning June 23 to unveil a scalable, high-performance wireless condition monitoring solution for large industrial applications.
Customers with large sites, such as automotive manufacturing facilities, processing plants or airport baggage handling systems can now utilize ABB Ability Smart Sensor technology together with Aruba Wi-Fi infrastructure to capture valuable health and performance data from their rotating equipment. They can then access this information via a web portal, a cloud interface, tablet or mobile phone application for further analysis that will provide useful insights into their operations.
The use of wireless sensors eliminates the cost and complexity associated with the installation, wiring and connection of sensors. Now, it will be easier for customers to deploy condition monitoring across their entire operation – potentially covering hundreds or even thousands of individual motors, pumps, bearings and gearing. Furthermore, with ABB’s Smart Sensor for hazardous areas, the scope of the technology will be extended to include oil and gas and chemical processing plants.
“Smart Sensor technology with Aruba Wi-Fi infrastructure is a game-changing solution for large-scale condition monitoring,” said Bernd Heisterkamp, Smart Solutions, business line Motion Services at ABB. “Smart Sensors are easy to install and commission – it is simply a question of activating the sensors, so they connect to the network by Bluetooth – then you are ready to start monitoring.”
One of the pilot installations of ABB Ability Smart Sensors operating over Aruba infrastructure is being commissioned at Axpo, one of Switzerland’s largest producers of renewable energy and an international leader in energy trading. Commercial installations are currently under discussion with a number of customers.
“When we first heard about this joint ABB-Aruba solution we knew that it would be a perfect fit for the 360-degrees approach of our digital power plant,” said Emil Bieri, Axpo’s Head of Digital Transformation Hydro. “ABB’s new offering is easy-to-deploy and provides us with the required insights and scalability for our large fleet of hydro power plants.”
HPE and ABB have been global, strategic partners since November 2017. The relationship combines the best of ABB’s digital offerings with HPE’s industry-leading networking, secure edge compute and hybrid information technology (IT) solutions, as well as new everything-as-a-service models.
