RWDI is an engineering and consulting firm with clients in various industries who benefit from the firm’s solutions to problems related to environmental and structural engineering.
The RWDI facility in Guelph, Ontario, offers Wind Tunnel Testing for various structures such as buildings and bridges. This testing is used to model and simulate wind impact on buildings and structures, to ensure they can be used safely and are strong. The drives and motors controlling the Wind Tunnels must be functional when needed.
The company, which runs high-cost and time sensitive operations, believes that digital is the future of the industry and that cloud-based analytics will be key in achieving the best performance.
RWDI installed a couple of ABB drive cabinets and low voltage NEMA motors, along with ABB Ability™ Condition Monitoring for Powertrains. The drives are regenerative, meaning they capture and utilize energy, resulting in cost savings for the customer. The motors are designed and built with reliability and lowest total cost of ownership at the forefront.
ABB Ability™ Condition Monitoring for powertrains provides an integrated, one-stop portal allowing RWDI operators to act proactively on machinery maintenance with a transparent view of operational variables and health indicators such as availability, environmental conditions and fault events.
“The RWDI powertrain is a perfect example of how ABB digital solutions enable the integration of individual components within one unified system, offering full transparency of data and analytics, and allowing people to make more informed decisions based on more accessible machine data,” said Hugues Therrien, Director of the Service Division at ABB.
The system’s integrated data aggregation and analytics helps customers learn about their equipment faster and have safer, more reliable and efficient operations. Its components are equipped with sensors and cloud connectivity. Variable speed drives can control any motor and are connected via the cloud gateway, while motors connect wirelessly with the ABB Ability™ Smart Sensor.
“The ABB monitoring system has been very useful in detecting elevated VFD temperatures due to dust accumulation and keeping tabs on our wind tunnel fan motors. Our facility operates 24/7 and it is critical that we monitor our vital equipment. The ABB system provides us with further assurance that our systems are operating properly and alerts us when conditions need attention. Technical condition data can be easily seen by us and ABB support staff on the fly enabling us to get quick answers to our technical questions and avoid unscheduled breakdowns,” said Bruce McInnis, RWDI.
