 The Moskovsky industrial farm, is one of the biggest Russian vegetable product manufacturers, situated 8 km from Moscow city. Tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines and other vegetables as well as mushrooms, greens and flowers are grown in the farm’s hot houses. The Moskovsky industrial farm supply its products to Moscow and to the Moscow Region. The farm uses TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI and SOFTLOGIC based control systems for more than 5 years.
Before 1999, Holland made climate-computers were used at the Moskovsky . They were costly and had some technical defects. Therefore, at the and of 1999, the Moskovsky farm’s management decided to build a new more flexible and scalable microclimate control system for hot houses. The new control system had to meet the following requirements:
- to provide agronomists with quality information supporting the agronomic science methods used at the farm;
- the HMI software should be flexible and allow easy adaptation to the new equipment and technologies;
- the HMI should be easy and intuitive for operators;
- the control system for individual hot house units shall be integrated into a corporate scale microclimate control system;
- the software should be less expensive and should provide the ROI within 1 year.
The TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI and SOFTLOGIC software ideally met all the above-mentioned requirements. The first successful implementation of the TRACE MODE based HMI control system has been made in 2000 by the Moskovsky farm’s own automation service on the area of 15 hectares of the hot house unit No. 12. The hot house unit No. 12 has been divided into 12 parts: 9  divisions by 1.5 hectares and 3 divisions by 0.5 hectares. The following equipment has been installed in each division:
- 3 analogue air temperature sensors;
- 1 analogue humidity sensor;
- 2 analogue transom position sensors.
In addition, 2 heating system water temperature sensors have been installed for the whole hot house unit (at the unit inlet and outlet). The signals from the local meteorological station, i.e. ambient air, wind direction and speed have also been introduced in the control system. The digital control of heating gate valves and transoms for each division have been implemented. 12 PID-loops for the ambient temperature have been programmed in the TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI software and have been installed in each hot house unit division. Altogether, about 80 analogue inputs and 72 digital outputs have been used in the TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI and SOFTLOGIC based control system.
The control system project development has been performed in the professional version of  TRACE MODE integrated SCADA/HMI and SOFTLOGIC development system for 32000 I/O’s. The Octagon Systems Micro PC’s were used as controllers. The controllers were programmed with the TRACE MODE Micro RTM softlogic software. The HMI level was based on the TRACE MODE HMI Real Time Monitor (RTM) for 1024 I/O installed on PC. Over ODBC interface, the data from TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI were transferred to the MS Access database, so the process documenting and additional monitoring of the operator actions have been arranged. Only half-year after the beginning of works, the control system for the hot house unit No. 12 has already been commissioned.
In autumn of the 2000, the development of the control system for the Moskovsky farm’s hot house unit No. 11 (10 divisions by 1.5 hectares each) started. This time, the Advantech 5000 series distributed I/O modules  have been used. As compared to the previous project, the new control system was more sophisticated - two new water temperature measuring devices have been added to the set of sensors in each division (at the inlet and outlet of the hot house unit division). In addition, heating system water pressure sensors have been installed at the inlet and outlet of the hot house unit No. 11. The same as at the unit No.12, the ambient temperature control in hot houses has been implemented (10 PID-loops).
After the successful commissioning of the second control system, a decision has been made to use the Advantech distributed I/O only combined with the TRACE SCADA/HMI and SOFTLOGIC software. Two Moskovsky farm engineers have passed training at the AdAstrA Research Group, Ltd.’s Authorised Training Centre. Then the hot house control systems have been simply replicated.
The hot house unit No. 10 specialising in growing of aubergines was automated in 2001. The control system for  6 divisions of the hot house covering 1.5 hectares for flowers was commissioned in autumn 2001. In this control system a watering process was automated for the first time. A little bit later, the control system for the hot house unit No. 10 was equipped with new CO consumption control subsystem in order to intensify the photosynthesis process.
The Moskovsky farm personnel have greatly appreciated the effectiveness of the TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI and SOFTLOGIC based control systems. Mr. E.V. Nikiforenkov, Chief Agronomist in the Moskovsky agricultural industrial farm said: “The implementation of our own climate-computer program based on TRACE MODE should increase the yields. The program includes everything that the agronomist and the division engineer may wish and it is quite easy in operation. The data being logged by the software allow to analyse, to collected statistics and to advise the division agronomists on the best growing conditions and plant load balancing.”
Mrs. L.I. Solkina, Manager of the 15 hectare area unit, considers: “TRACE MODE HMI allows to  monitor the situation in the hot houses more accurately. The automatic micro-climate control will allow to more precisely maintain the necessary process parameters for obtaining high yields.”
“TRACE MODE is quite handy,” says L.D. Krylova, Leading Agronomist, Division No. 12. “It is easy in operation. All parameters are logged. It means that it is possible to view in what conditions the plants were a day or a month before, to compare the mean daily temperature, to view the total accumulated solar radiation, to analyse the air humidity change.”
The Moskovsky farm is sure that all the control system goals have been achieved by means of the TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI and SOFTLOGIC software. Now the automated climate control systems covers 100 hectares of 114 hectares of protected ground available at the Moskovsky farm. The effectiveness of automated climate control in the hot houses is proven by high yields.
The farm’s control system is constantly updated and improved. In 2005, it is planned to launch the corporate scale integrated microclimate control system based on the TRACE MODE SCADA/HMI software. |
