Advant Master control system upgrade to 800xA for Korea District Heating

Safeguarding reliable function in the face of ever increasing heating power demand while protecting the investment

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Korea District Heating Corporation and ABB co-operate over years for a happy energy world, with long experience of control systems from different generations.

Heating Seoul with environmental responsibility

KDHC, Korea District Heating Corporation, is a state owned company that was established in 1985. The mission is to create “a happy energy world”, by providing people with comfortable and convenient living conditions through energy conservation and environmental improvement.

KDHC was founded by the Korean government, as a direct answer to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The company takes its environmental responsibility deeply serious and is most concerned to operate well controlled, reliable, and highly energy-efficient processes.

The second largest plant of KDHC is Gangnam in Seoul, supplying 134 000 households. The demand is ever increasing.

When the existing Asea Master control system was growing close to its capacity limits, KDHC had worries that unexpected malfunction would happen during normal operation. It was especially important to replace the conventional and somewhat old MasterView operator stations with state-of-the-art operator workstations.

Backward compatibility and investment protection

To maintain reliable function and also to secure higher performance at cheaper price in the future, ABB recommended upgrading step by step as the best solution.

One of the most important factors for KDHC was to protect the existing investment by the reuse of controllers, application software and I/O units. The unique backward compatibility that ABB provides, whenever new releases are made, is highly appreciated by KDHC. In a later upgrade the oldest controllers, MP 280/1, can be replaced by AC 450 or AC 800M.

Main facts

Industry Energy and utilities
Customer KDHC
Country Korea
Solutions Control system upgrade from Master to Advant and 800xA
The company is most concerned to operate well controlled, reliable, and highly energy-efficient processes
Providing Seoul people with comfortable and convenient living conditions through energy conservation and environmental improvement

Mr Kang, ABBs salesman, and Mr. Jae-Kwang Kim, I&C engineer at Gangnam

Unique backward compatibility that ABB provides, whenever new releases are made, is highly appreciated by KDHC

Control system evolution path

ABB has developed comprehensive solutions with different levels of step-wise evolution for the ABB Master family, introduced as ASEA Master (MasterPiece controller, MasterView HMI) in 1984, and the Advant Master family (AC450 controller, Advant Station HMI) introduced in 1992.

ABB evolution experts made a complete review of KDHC’s earlier control system in order to identify modernization opportunities which offered the greatest ROI at the time of the upgrade*:

* For the current modernization scenarios recommended by ABB please refer to ASEA Master and Advant Master DCS System Evolution offering.

Good upgrading experiences

The upgrade progress went perfectly smoothly, with only minor problems. Mr. Jae-Kwang Kim, I&C engineer at Gangnam, is pleased with the way the project was carried out. He also appreciates how ABB solved the peer-to-peer communication between the existing MasterPiece controllers and the new AC 800M, which replaced an old conventional control panel for two of the boilers.

“We are confident that the next step in the upgrading, when the oldest controllers will be replaced by new ones, will work as smoothly and successfully as this first step has done.”


“The possibility to carry out the upgrading step-by-step minimizes the down-time and saves money.”

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