Improvements of the ELBE Control System Infrastructure and SCADA Environment

The ELBE Center for High-Power Radiation Sources comprises a 40 MeV c.w. electron linear accelerator, driving diverse secondary beams, both electromagnetic radiation and particles. Its control system is based on PLCs, fast data acquisition systems and the industrial SCADA system WinCC. In the past three years, requirements for availability and reliability increased, while at the same time changes of the machine configuration and instrumentation need to be handled permanently. Improvements of the control system infrastructure concerning power supply, IT and systems monitoring have been realized and are still under way. Second, along with the last major SCADA system upgrade, we implemented a more redundant SCADA infrastructure, improved long term data storage and continuously improved our standards for software development.