Fuel Depot Station

Client: Fuel Depot Station
Project length: 4 week software writing & 2 days installation
HF divisions involved: Automated Controls

Brief project description: Our automated controls division, HF Controls were contracted to work on the control systems for a leading Fuel Distribution Company and two of their Northern sites in Inverness and Aberdeen. The fuel depots, which normally take fuel from oil tanker ships, store it in their onsite storage tanks and then fill fuel trucks for distribution to petrol stations, required significant upgrades. Their existing system was dependant on an obsolete, discontinued Mitsubishi PLC and this needed to be upgraded.

The client required the PLC to be upgraded to a new, modern PLC that can be supported with readily available spares and technical support if needed to help future proof the system.

Our HF Controls team took the old Mitsubishi software and rewrote it in Siemens TIA portal to be uploaded into brand new S7-1500 Siemens PLC. An FAT (factory acceptance test) was carried out in our workshop using simulation PLC’s and our test rig to test and prove all software logic was operating correctly before installing within the live fuel depot.

After the Factory Acceptance Test was complete, site gave a 2-day outage to allow our install and commissioning engineers to remove the existing PLC, wire and terminate the new PLC, and commission the system. This was done over a weekend to avoid any disruptions to the supply chain.

Before

After

Project Challenges: The Fuel Depots located in Inverness and Aberdeen are both live, busy hubs of activity. Our Controls team had to ensure that the switch of PLC systems ran smoothly to ensure that there was no unforeseen operational downtime for these vital fuel depots.

Any issue that would delay or halt existing fuelling operations would lead to major disruption further down the supply chain, so it was important that our system upgrade work was successful straight out of the box. Our skilled engineers managed to complete the successful installation first time and the new systems were successfully fitted, tested and signed off without a hitch.

Find out more

At HF, our Automated Controls Division can produce Control Panel Solutions ranging from Single Motor Panels to Automated Plant and Production Line Control Panels.

Whether your business requires one off bespoke electrical control panels or the production of multiple units, our Automated Controls Facility can produce solutions ideally suited for a diverse range of industrial sectors from Telecommunication businesses all the way to operations in the Transportation and Agriculture sector.

Our Control Panel Services cover:

• Electrical Control Panel Design and Manufacturing.
• Instrumentation Control Panel Design and Manufacturing
• Fault rated motor control centres and LV Switchboards.
• Instrument/Pneumatic Control Systems.
• PLC/SCADA software design control package systems.
• Inverter-Drive and Networking solutions.
• CAD Drawings
• Site installation and commissioning

As part of the HF Group, we can offer our clients an unsurpassed level of genuinely in-house capabilities. With senior-level hands-on management from initial planning to final handover and the opportunity to tap into a wide range of services, all backed by a team of consultants with a skills base and command of technologies which are second to none.

To find out more about the work that we do in Automated Controls, please contact our Glasgow head office today. With branches in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Belfast and Aberdeen, we operate nationwide in everything from Manned 24 hour call out services to the latest in 5G telecommunication services.