EN-CV Controls Project and Consolidation Challenges

The EN Cooling & Ventilation (CV) group ensures the proper operation and maintenance of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration systems throughout CERN's large accelerators complex and experimental areas. The EN-CV Controls section is responsible for the production and maintenance of the control systems for these plants. The CV controls is currently implemented by over 630 Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). The size of the park has been continuously increasing over the years and a similar trend is expected in the future. Due to the heterogeneity of the equipment, the different installations’ life cycles, and the numerous hardware/software upgrades that are required at different times, the production and support of these control systems present a multitude of challenges. This paper identifies the challenges the CV group is faced to produce, operate, and maintain its very large number of controls. In addition, it presents the solutions that have been adopted and implemented to over-come the challenges, as well as some proposals for the future