Case study · 2025–2026
Freelance DCS control panels for a high-power test facility
Industrial manufacturing (high-power electrical test infrastructure). Scope: I/O and electrical design, panel build, ABB Freelance software update, DCS programming support, staged delivery.
The challenge
An industrial manufacturer was moving its high-power test infrastructure into a new facility. The test bays include disconnect switches, contactors, breakers, transformers, load reactors, motors, exhaust fans and fire suppression. All of it had to be brought under one ABB Freelance distributed control system (DCS), updated to the current Freelance release. The customer needed:
- control panels designed around its I/O list and facility drawings;
- terminal maps its electrical contractor could wire to on site;
- panels delivered in step with construction.
What we did
- Worked from the customer's I/O list. Weekly synchronization calls with the customer's engineering team took the facility control drawings and the critical-protection I/O list and turned them into panel designs, one cabinet at a time.
- Designed a set of DCS control panels, each issued for review as its own schematic set (Rev 0 onward), with AutoCAD drawing files supplied alongside. The design details included:
- plugged connections between enclosures and to the devices under test;
- terminal blocks to power current transformers fed from other enclosures;
- trapped-key interlock devices;
- a standard 42" × 24" × 8" enclosure where it fit.
- Built the panels on ABB S800 I/O over PROFIBUS:
- CI801 PROFIBUS DP-V1 interfaces;
- DI828 120 V digital-input modules;
- DO828 relay-output modules;
- extended module termination units;
- plug-in relays, ABB CP-E 24 VDC power supplies, miniature circuit breakers, and Federal Signal stack lights.
- Delivered in batches as each panel passed final checks. The first panels shipped early in 2026, and the last of the set reached the site in spring 2026.
- Issued the as-built set. A final "as-built" revision (Rev 2) of the full panel package included a detailed contractor terminal-block map. It marks the exact landing point for every field wire.
- Software and programming: we supplied the ABB software service contract that brings the system to the current Freelance release. We are now working with the customer's engineer on the control logic, interlocking and the operator screens drafted on the customer's side.
The result
All of the panels are on site, and the contractor has been wiring them to the as-built terminal maps. Programming, HMI configuration and commissioning are under way ahead of a planned plant shutdown in winter 2026–27, when the new system is due to take over.
What it shows: DCS-scale I/O design from a customer's I/O list, a multi-panel package kept consistent through revisions to as-built, staged delivery into a live construction site, and ABB Freelance software and programming support, all from one team.