WHAT IS SCADA ?

SCADA is Supervisory Control And Data

Acquisition

SUPERVISORY CONTROL of equipment,

e.g. closing and tripping of swith-gears and
tap changing of transformers in power
plants, controlling process parameters in
process plants.
DATA ACQUISTION, i.e. ability to get
various information from the field by some
means

Voltage and frequency control

Control and interlocking of switching
devices
Protection of high voltage equipment
Status indication and event recording
Condition monitoring and alarms
Fault location and disturbance recording
Auto shut-down and automatic restoration
Synchorochek and synchronization
Automatic sequential control

In early times
electromechanical devices used to performed
protection, monitoring and metering functions.
Frequent human inventions were necessary to
exercise primitive automation and control
techniques, individual skills of Operators were
relied upon to control and automate the
generators. Communication between the system
functions were conducted over phone from an
operator at the plant and the central facilities.
System devices were not intelligent and lacked
ability to communicate necessary with each
other.

Now-a-days, due to various factors such as requirement

of better management, cramped space and man power
constrains, the need for monitoring and controlling the
outstations from central station has become very
essential. Since conventional wired schemes are simply
not possible with the limited number of pilots wires
available, therefore the supervisory and data acquisition
(SCADA) system has been introduced.
The multipoint SCADA system is one in which several
remote stations are controlled and supervised from one
central control centre

Remote Terminal Units (RTU)