OPC server for 800xa, how to connect it to a PI Historian
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Dont use OPC-DA
Actually, the Standard PI Interface for OPC-DA works very well with 800xA. However, it doubles the number of subscriptions to the AC800 controllers ( or any other controller ) because you are already logging everything into the basic history service in 800xA.
Instead you can use the standard PI OPC-HDA [u]history[/u] interface and pull data directly from the Basic History service. You can then use Bulk Data Manager to pull the log configurations out of 800xA to get a list of PI data points to log into PI. You can update PI data by polling the Basic History OPC-HDA server every 5 minutes so that your PI system is never very far behind the DCS. As a bonus, if you ever have to stop the PI interface then you can automatically recover all the missing data from the Basic History.
I've used this interface on many sites and IMO it is far easier to work with than the OPC-DA interface.
The OPC History interface from PI is the same price as the OPC-DA interface. There is however one small limitation -- you cannot log String data via HDA because the Basic History service cannot log strings. Unless you have batch management it is unlikely you will ever really need to log a string variable. You should also ensure that your ABB Basic Historian server ( usually the connectivity server ) has a high performance disk controller.
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