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The power supply of the PLC controller I am working with (X20PS9600 to be precise) has internal readings into software for the current and voltage it is delivering. I am not sure about the purpose of these.

How often, how likely is that these parameters go outside the valid range and the CPU is still operational enough to do anything? For instance, if the power is gone, my software could send a safety shutdown for other devices that are not powered by this supply so might still be running... but I have doubts if my CPU would stay alive for long enough to do this when the power is gone.

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While I don't work with PLC programming specifically, MCUs work similarly. They nowadays implement a low voltage detect, LVD, aka brown-out detect, BOD as standard. Back in the days some >15 years ago you had to provide this protection yourself with external voltage supervising circuits.

Quite often there's a possibility to get an early warning when the supply voltage is dipping towards dangerous levels, but before the point where the part has to reset itself since it can no longer guarantee reliable execution. This is for "limp home" purposes such as shutting everything down safely etc.

Similarly, you should be able to see what was the cause of a reset - was it a power failure? This could be important for diagnostics and trouble-shooting purposes.

A PLC may in addition keep track of how much current a certain output function consumes and what it does during overcurrent would be hardware-specific. Quite likely the outputs have built-in overcurrent protection in the form of smart MOSFET drivers, but I wouldn't count on it.

I've actually seen plenty of automotive/mobile PLC which happily let its I/O circuitry burn to a crisp. Don't assume that the really expensive PLC was designed by competent people! I could name drop some big companies in mobile hydraulics who produce absolutely awful PLCs, that easily break in case of overcurrent/shorts, reverse voltage etc. Or go bananas when faced with voltage spikes, large current surges and other such highly expected EMI events in any industrial machinery. I've even reverse-engineered some of these PLCs and concluded that several of them were plain badly designed...

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While I have used B&R in the past, I'm not familiar with this system. Reading the features list I notice,

Redundancy of the CPU / X2X Link power supply possible through parallel operation of multiple power supply modules.

This implies use of two or more power supplies to improve system reliability. Being able to monitor both supplies would be important to detect problems and identify which one requires attention.

There may also be applications for mixed power sources such as solar / wind in conjunction with battery backup. Being able to monitor the voltage and current would allow, for example, some sort of charge counting to monitor the charge and run-time left in the battery.

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