Prevent Nuisance Alarms in Niagara R2 During Plant or Equipment Downtime

[Product_Support]

Issue

Alarm notifications are generated and forwarded when plant or equipment is intentionally offline for maintenance or other downtime, causing nuisance alarms.

Product Line

TAC IA Series

Environment

Niagara R2

Cause

The system lacks logic to inhibit alarms when plant or equipment is intentionally offline. By default, the StatusInhibit property of the AI object is not linked, and the inhibitTime property remains at zero, preventing proper alarm suppression.

Resolution

1. Add a Binary Output (BO) Object

   • Link the StatusOutput of the BO to the StatusInhibit of the AI object (the alarm to be inhibited).

2. Set inhibitTime Property

   • Ensure the inhibitTime property of the AI object is set to a non-zero value (any value other than zero).

3. Configure Input Signal

   • The BO object should represent the plant or equipment’s offline status:
     • From an object indicating equipment down/offline
     • Or from a manually activated GxPage object

4. Verify Functionality

   • When the plant or equipment is offline and the BO signal feeds into StatusInhibit, the AI object will not produce alarms even if alarm conditions exist.
   • Test thoroughly before deploying in a live system.