In order to realize a safe and reliable sustainable society, measurement and control technologies are essential. Fuji Electric has developed measurement and control technologies in many fields including power, industrial, water treatment, and commercial fields and achieved good results. In accordance with Japan’s New Growth Strategy and Basic Energy Plan, as well as global market and technological developments, we are moving forward with technological development focused on energy and environment. The key for these technologies is to create them smarter, safer, and greener. We are pushing forward with approaches for solutions that achieve the optimal service and operation of energy supply, distribution, and up to the demand side, realize energy conservation, resource conservation, and decrease the environmental burden, and that ensure safety and peace-of-mind.

The energy environment that surrounds Japanese businesses is becoming increasingly severe with demands for reductions in energy consumption. Environmental improvements that make day-to-day and continuous energy management possible have become necessary. In order to resolve the many issues that reside in the current state of energy management systems, Fuji Electric is working on energy management solutions that take into consideration both the supply side and the demand side. Energy analysis templates and the energy conservation navigation function based on the MainGATE/PPA process performance analysis package improve operation systems. The energy conservation operation framework contributes to improvements in the customer energy conservation work process.

In recent years, even higher energy conservation performance is required in plant control systems. Operators have to find the optimal operating point and make it the set point, and they have to also assess and monitor control performance toward that set point and maintain high control performance. Fuji Electric is working to achieve these demands through the use of control technologies and modeling techniques. Major approaches in recent years include optimal dispatch control for multiple pumps, control performance assessment & monitoring, and event driven modeling techniques. We expect that an energy conservation effect of about 3% can be achieved by utilizing these technologies and techniques.

Fuji Electric has supplied distributed monitoring and control systems to various fields. Recently, we have developed the monitoring and control system platform“ MICREX-VieW” and its derivative“ MICREX-VieW Compact”, which expand the range of applications for small and medium-scale systems and maximize compatibility with our existing systems. They feature high reliability through redundancy, resource inheritance for existing systems, automatic generation of control software by specification definition, and cost performance improvement due to the platform technology. They feature packages and templates for various fields and can be applied to broad fields including power generation plants, garbage incinerator plants, and food plants.

In the plant control and machine control fields, further improvements in quality and the stabilization and streamlining of operations are required. Fuji Electric has developed the high-speed/high-precision synchronous“E-SX Bus”, a backbone bus for configuring control system, and the high-speed/high-performance“SPH3000MM”CPU module to execute applications. These enable high-speed and high-precision motion control while also making it possible to flexibly expand applications up to large-scale systems with numerous I/O points. As application examples, high-speed and high-precision motion control has been achieved in multi-color printing machines and steel/iron plant systems.

Fuji Electric provides two types of infrared gas analyzers: small single beam types with a simple construction, and double beam types that have high sensitivity but are large and require complicated adjustments, and has developed a small, high sensitivity infrared gas analyzer with a single beam. By creating a measuring section with higher sensitivity and employing sample switching (SSW), the analyzer achieves low density measurements that surpass the double beam measurement range. The analyzer can be used in a wide range of applications from metal heat treatments and monitoring applications for biomass-/waste-related generated fuels that require high density measurements, to low density exhaust gas monitoring and monitoring impurities in pure gases that require low density measurements.

For meters that are difficult to connect to commercial power such as gas meters and water meters, a communication method is required that can operate for long periods on a battery and that differ from those that use power. Fuji Electric has developed a full mesh wireless method for ultra low power telemetering that operates for long periods on a battery. This method is composed of two distinctive techniques: an access technique and a routing technique for relay transferring. Because of these characteristics, it has been adopted as the new standard telemetering communication method by the Japan Utility Telemetering Association.

In the field of process automation, wireless-compatible field devices are starting to be commercialized that support international industrial wireless standards. Fuji Electric has developed a ISA 100.11a-compliant wireless system platform. For petroleum and chemical plants, we have created a prototype gas detection system that uses this platform. By making the devices wireless, real-time monitoring becomes possible not just on-site but in the central control room, which can contribute to further increase in plant safety. In design of wireless corresponding field devices, by employing intermittent operation as well as optimized design of the power circuit and communication timing, low power consumption and battery operation have been realized.

After the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, interest has been increasing for earthquake disaster prevention awareness and building safety. As a new field of measuring devices, Fuji Electric has created a prototype vibration sensor module that applies MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) technology. This vibration sensor is capable of continuous micro-vibration measurements of around 0.1 Gal. It can detect not only damage by earthquakes, but also the alteration of strength in a building caused by age-related deterioration, so it can be applied to structural health monitoring that includes continuous micro-vibration measurements. We are also considering applications in high-frequency/high-acceleration ranges for motor diagnostics.

In recent years, pipe thickness management has been further emphasized from the standpoint of stable operations in plants such as power generation plants. Fuji Electric has developed a system that can easily detect pipe wall thinning through heat insulation even when the plant is running. The system utilizes a three-beam calculation method, a Fuji Electric pipe measurement technique, and it can measure the one-side thickness of a pipe even when the measurement method is the radiation transmission method. The system does not require radiation exposure controls because it is an approved device with a certification label that has been reviewed and certified to have a sufficiently small amount of radiation exposure. The system can be used on pipes from 80 A to 500 A with a thickness 30 mm or lower, and it can measure thickness with an accuracy within 2.0%.

There is a strong desire for utility gas alarms to be made cordless by battery operation. For this reason, the power consumption for methane sensors must be made 1/1,000 th or lower than that of current products. Osaka Gas and Fuji Electric have achieved a sensor with this ultra low power consumption by attempting to create a thin membrane and miniaturizing the sensor using MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) technology to drive the sensor intermittently to generate heat only at the instant of detection. Currently we are participating in the“ Technological Development for a Next-generation Highly-reliable Gas Sensor” project, a New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) grant project, and the long-term reliability of the sensor is being verified by large-scale field tests.

Environmental radiation monitoring system continually measures and monitors the amount of environmental radiation around nuclear facilities 24-hours a day, 365-days a year. These systems must continue to function even when a disaster occurs such as an earthquake. Fuji Electric takes countermeasures for earthquakes by duplicating transmissions lines with land radio equipment and installing backup power supplies, seismically isolated monitoring posts, and seismically evaluated equipment. Furthermore, we have developed new portable monitoring posts equipped with semiconductor detectors and monitoring cars equipped with the same functions as stationary monitoring posts, and we can supply equipment that makes measuring and monitoring possible without power supplies or transmission lines.