Improved service on Barcelona Metro

With a flexible control concept, it has been possible to minimise maintenance work on the Metro Barcelona, says Chris Milburn, distribution sales manager of GE Fanuc Automation

The TMB Ferrocaril Metropolità de Barcelona has been carrying people in Barcelona for 75 years. Today, 287 million people annually travel on the five lines. The whole network stretches over a distance of 81.2km. The system has been subjected to several technical overhauls over the years to improve service and increase safety.

Old relay-based control technology has gradually been replaced by PLC technology. To date, 65 stations and tunnels on three lines have been equipped with a new control concept. The PLC-based systems control the escalators and lifts, the ventilation systems in the stations and tunnels, the water drainage, the electricity supply to stations in the transformer centre and the control monitor of the station supervisor.

Control concept The whole control concept was developed by the GE Power Controls company and contains 600 GE Fanuc controllers of the Series 90-30 type as well as Cimplicity HMI software. The controllers in the individual areas (such as escalators) of a station send the data to a central controller. This controller passes the data on to the central control room. PLC communication takes place via an RS485 interface with GE Fanuc's own serial protocol, SNP. In the Metro control room, the acquired data is converted into valuable information on two servers equipped with Cimplicity control and monitoring software, in a redundant configuration.

Captured data is displayed by Cimplicity on twelve viewer stations. More than 100,000 data items are entered, visualised and controlled in real-time. There are 300 different alarms.

Unlike the relay technology implemented previously, every single item of the whole application can now be visualised. This simplifies diagnosis and maintenance of stations and tunnels.

The entire concept is based on a master concept for one station. This master concept is adapted and used in all the other stations, making programming of the controllers easier. A variety of different control tasks can be performed by one PLC type, leading to simpler maintenance of the control technology.

Another very important criterion for choosing the GE Fanuc controller was the communication stability. The background to this is that the Metro owns its own electricity network (220V AC), and this is subject to enormous fluctuations.

Exploited in the Barcelona Metro, there is the possibility of redundancy on three levels, server to server, server to PLC and server to viewer. Another advantage of Cimplicity is the very simple configuring in redundant applications - only one PC server needs to be configured. All other servers are configured automatically. The third advantage is the optimum synchronisation of the data. Only one server communicates with the controllers during operation. If this server should fail, the second server takes over communication with the controllers without loss of data. This avoids overloading of the network.

TMB has been able to greatly simplify maintenance of the Metro by implementing the new control concept. Functional breakdowns at stations such as failure of an escalator are detected immediately and the necessary maintenance work initiated. This has considerably reduced maintenance times leading eventually to a greatly improved service for passengers on the Barcelona Metro. Modernisation of the last two lines using the new control concept is planned for the future. In addition, all maintenance companies should get access to Cimplicity HMI to guarantee an even quicker service.

• GE Fanuc
  e105@industrialnetworking.co.uk