Challenge: A power supply plant consists of a variety of automation components from different vendors. These components communicate with each other over a CAN network. There are different communication interfaces for connecting to the plant operator. To achieve higher power, multiple plants can be joined together in a network.
 
Obstacles to overcome: Low response speed and bandwidth (10 Mbit/s) of the CAN network: problem balancing mains fluctuations. Commissioning multiple networked plants time consuming. Resource-intensive.
 
Solution: Switch to OPC UA with publish/subscribe mechanism for internal and external communication. Rather than multiple communication interfaces for plant operators, there is a single, uniform OPC UA interface. For plants connected in a network, information models can be aggregated.
 
Advantages: 
Fast communication with publish/subscribe mechanism
Fast transmission of device and machine updates
Fast commissioning
Reduced cabling