PowerFlex 525 and Opto 22

Hi,

Has anybody controlled and monitored a PowerFlex 525 VFD using Opto 22's PAC Control? The client is still undecided between EPIC or staying with SNAP/PAC, but it should be irrelevant since the software will be PCA Control in either case. I have been able to do this with Yaskawa drives over Modbus, but this will be my first time with PowerFlex. Have you used RS485 or Ethernet TCP/IP?

Any pointers will be welcome.

Thank you,

Thank you. In the meantime, I found that PowerFlex 525 accepts only a limited set of Modbus commands, over RS-485, not Ethernet/IP.

The last guy who answered is just spamming the board; he has no "friend" with relevant experience. I'll remove his post in a minute.

In general, use Modbus RTU over RS-485 for this purpose. You get start/stop and reference/feedback control over a simple set of holding registers, and monitor parameter access over another set.

I can't give you advice on the use of EtherNet/IP with Opto-22, unfortunately. There may be some other folks on the Forum who have good information and are not spammers.

Today, after I received the Opto 22 EPIC GRV-CSERI-4 serial communication module, I am happy to report that I was able to establish RS-485 communication between the EPIC PR1 processor and the Powerflex 525. I was able to read the drive status. It is undervoltage-faulted, (bit 7), because I am powering it with single-phase 115 VAC instead of 230 VAC. I was able to see the Cmd Fwd/Rev (bit 3) and Rotating Fwd/Rev (bit 4) change as I pressed the reverse direction button on the VFD's front. You just have to add 1 to the register numbers given by Allen-Bradley (i.e. to read the drive status, use 0x2101 instead of 0x2100).