Currently in operation across 80% of Australia's longwalls, CitectSCADA provides data on mine operations and alerts the user to any alarms raised from the monitoring of equipment and the mine environment.

Citect Oceania managing director Scott Wooldridge told International Longwall News the V7 version of the software, released last month, is a key upgrade based on the existing CitectSCADA system and has been widely applauded by the longwall industry.

"Key aspects of the V7 software release that will be helpful for longwall mining applications are online changes - which means for the operator on the mine, if you want to change the configuration of the set-up you can do that online without stopping and starting the application," Wooldridge said.

He added that the V7 system allows for easy clustering of information into a single integrated application.

"At the moment that's quite difficult to do but you can easily, with V7, take your OEM version of CitectSCADA that comes, for example, inbuilt into longwall mining equipment and your configured system that you've put in the longwall control room - for example a gas monitoring, power monitoring or chock monitoring application – and combine that together in a single application that views the entire control system," Wooldridge explained to ILN.

"You're not looking at four or five different screens and different aspects of the control system; it's all integrated into a single alarming system, a single trending system and a single viewing system and a single reporting system without having to re-engineer the different viewing systems."

Having recently taken the software on a release tour throughout the east coast of Australia - and due to head to Western Australia in the coming weeks - Wooldridge said the industry feedback on V7 has been very positive.

He added that users of the new version require no additional training on the previous SCADA systems and upgrading the system can be accomplished quickly and simply, before the new functions can be utilised.

"One of the core aspects of the CitectSCADA software is that it's always been a seamless upgrade without the need to re-engineer large components of the system," Wooldridge said.

"We don't want our customers having to re-engineer their application every time they get the new version so it's one of the fundamental design philosophies we have.

"All you need to do is install the new software with the new upgrades and you can get running with all the new features."