A plant control system has a distributed configuration with multiple controllers for each object or function to be controlled. Therefore, it is difficult to reduce costs by reducing the number of controllers. In order to solve this problem, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) is promoting the application of virtualization technology, which is becoming increasingly popular in IT systems, to plant controllers. By applying virtualization technology, multiple controllers can be integrated into and implemented on a single physical hardware, and significant cost reductions and reduction of energy consumption and CO2 emissions of the controller itself can be expected. This time, to put the virtualized controller into practical use, we have developed methods required for plant controllers for (1) improving the real-time performance and (2) switching the system in a redundant configuration. We have confirmed that the prototype with the control period of 50 msec satisfies the real-time performance and availability required for plant controllers. This report describes on this development.
