Helping a mining company with their DECS

The Client: 

We worked with one of Australia’s most established mining companies in far North Queensland that operates three bauxite mines, which feature a number of processing facilities, wharves, ports, power stations and ferry terminals.

The Challenge:

They came to us needing a solution to the obsolescence of their Digital Excitation Control System (Basler DECS-200). While the DECS-200 is a good system, it is an older model with fewer capabilities compared to new systems in the market, so the chances of outages are higher, and the availability of replacement parts is lower. With this challenge in mind, we got to work finding the best solution for our client — a replacement system that would perform just as well—or even better—than their current set-up.

Our Solution:

The first thing we set about doing was finding a replacement for the client’s Basler DECS-200. It needed to be a like-for-like replacement, ensuring their operations would continue running smoothly during the changeover. With this in mind, we replaced the DECS-200 with the DECS-250, a robust system with all of the features and capabilities of the DECS-200 but with additional protection and data recording features. We took the time to ensure that during the replacement process that all settings conversion and preparation were undertaken with the utmost care. 

Following the replacement, our team conducted onsite testing and performance comparison of the old system versus the new, doing our due diligence to ensure the replacement performed at its best. This onsite testing was also the perfect opportunity for our client to use the communication features and make programmable logic changes to enhance reliability thanks to the ‘enhance’ feature of the DECS-250.

Before

After

The Outcome:

The client was thrilled with the outcome of this project and had this to say soon after completion: 

“Thanks for your great work over the last week getting the remaining DECS-200’s swapped out with the new DECS-250, without any load shed or incidents. We even managed to get the testing needed and have some direction now on the extra alarms and monitoring we can get up and running.”