Fieldbus goes mainstream

''Process fieldbus in the form of Foundation Fieldbus H1 and high speed Ethernet, and Profibus PA and DP have all moved into the mainstream of process automation and are being installed in large plants for critical applications,'' says Larry O’Brien of ARC Advisory Group.

By Control Engineering Staff September 18, 2003

”Process fieldbus in the form of Foundation Fieldbus H1 and high speed Ethernet, and Profibus PA and DP have all moved into the mainstream of process automation and are being installed in large plants for critical applications,” says Larry O’Brien of ARC Advisory Group .

A recent ARC Insights report indicates the process fieldbus market has narrowed to the two primary choices and is being increasingly deployed in traditional heavy process industries such as refining, petrochemical, chemical, oil & gas, and power generation.

Fieldbus installations continue to be confined to smaller size applications, but a few installations have more than 2,000 fieldbus nodes each and recent press releases indicate that when operational, overseas fieldbus installations will exceed 10,000 nodes.

Additionally, user experiences with fieldbus have been positive. Several companies no longer limit fieldbus to laboratory and pilot applications and have begun deploying fieldbus on mission-critical applications. Some companies have even begun specifying fieldbus on an enterprise-wide basis.

If you adopted a ”wait and see” attitude about fieldbus a few years ago, the waiting period is over and there’s enough successes out there to justify getting onboard the fieldbus train.

—Dave Harrold, senior editor, Control Engineering, dharrold@reedbusiness.com