The New Integrated WAN Interconnected SCADA Systems

Kanchan Avadhani Siddhi Mujumdar Vipul Pawar

AISSSMS’ Women’s College of Engineering, Pune-411001

ABSTRACT:
A number of new technologies for monitoring, protection, and control of the power grid have been
perfected in recent years and a judicious application of these technologies can help to reduce the frequency
and severity of future catastrophic failures. Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system
provides an excellent tool for monitoring and control of grid operations. With the opening of the electrical
utility market, SCADA systems have now changed from “Luxury” to a “Necessity”.
The traditional SCADA approaches assume that each function such as protection, control, monitoring, and
maintenance are supported by a separate infrastructure of recording instruments and/or controllers for
obtaining and processing data. One issue that did not get adequate attention regarding control and
protection of power systems in the past SCADA systems is the data integration and information exchange.
These SCADA models provide acceptable performance and reliability, but it has numerous drawbacks,
particularly in the areas of flexibility and open access to information. The new upcoming trends like Wide
Area Network (WAN), interconnected SCADA systems can eliminate these drawbacks. Configuration and
communication techniques of WAN interconnected SCADA system are presented in the paper. This system
can lead to excellent reliability and processing capabilities of existing SCADA systems.

1.INTRODUCTION
With the introduction of the new computer based equipment for control and protection in
the mid-eighties, the integration of the data and information exchange were possible, but
were not explored. Continued evolution of networking and PC technologies has enabled
better integration of control center systems and driven down operating costs. By
employing low cost high performance PC servers, new load dispatching control systems
can be implemented at substantially lower development cost. Especially in the current
fluid and rapidly changing environment faced by the power industry, these new load
dispatching control systems can be readily tailored to flexibly accommodate whatever
operating structural changes emerge in years ahead.
Electric utility deregulation, economic pressure of forcing, downsizing and the market
place pressures of potential takeover; have forced utilities to examine their operational
and organizational practices. Utilities are realizing that they must shift their focus to
customer service. The flow of information requires data communication over extended
network of system. The advent of industry deregulation has placed a greater emphasis on
the availability of information, the analysis of this information and the subsequent
decision making to optimize the system operation in a competitive environment. A
number of new technologies for monitoring, protection, and control of the power grid
have been perfected in recent years and a judicious application of these technologies can
help to reduce the frequency and severity of future catastrophic failures.
Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system provides an excellent tool
for monitoring and control. SCADA is a measurement and control system of a central
host or a master, one or more field data gathering and remote units and a collection of
standard and custom software used to monitor and control remotely located field data
elements. In the traditional approach, SCADA system acquires and process field data
through RTU (Remote Telemetry Unit) that are wired to substation switchyard and
located in control house. In this local substation relaying and control solution are quite
independent of EMS (Energy Management System), and there is no data integration. The
SCADA model provides acceptable performance and reliability, but it has numerous
drawbacks, particularly in the areas of flexibility and open access to information. Using
Wide Area Network (WAN) these drawbacks can be eliminated. In WAN control centers
and substation controllers are integrated for obstruction free information exchange.

2. INTEGRATION AND CONFIGURATION OF WAN CONNECTED

SCADA SYSTEM:
SCADA exchanged information with substation controller via telephone lines with
proprietary protocols. To address these issues it is necessary to:
1) Employ low cost PC server.
2) Minimize system-operating cost by adopting an integrated type of SCADA.
3) Reexamine the traditional system configuration both in terms of constituent
elements as a system as a whole.
WAN interconnected SCADA systems that fully integrate all the independent power
control systems leads to excellent reliability and processing capabilities of existing
SCADA systems.
Configuration of the WAN interconnected SCADA system consist of control center
systems and substation systems

Fig: Configuration of WAN interconnected SCADA systems

2.1 Control center systems:
The control center systems consist of an integrated load dispatching computer system
with servers and support for client terminals in the Wide Area Network (WAN) and
Local Area Network (LAN) for operators. The integrated load dispatching computer
system effectively integrates the various computer systems deployed at the WAN and
LAN. Processing performance and reliability are significantly improved by the
integration and consolidation of system operations. The terminals in LAN are connected
to the integrated load dispatching computer system via WANs, and operators in LAN can
access real-time information using the terminals. Backup equipment is installed in one of
the LAN in the event the main load dispatching equipment fails.
2.2 Substation systems:
Substation Automation is deployment of substation and feeder operating functions and
applications ranging from SCADA and alarm processing to integrated Volt/Var control in
order to optimize the management of capital assets and enhance operation and
maintenance efficiencies with minimal human intervention. Substation controllers are
installed in substations and generating stations. The traditional switchboards are replaced
with more compatible Graphical User Interface (GUI) which uses various sensors to
collect information from various station equipments. The substation controllers support
RTU and communication functions. The RTU (Remote Telemetry Unit) is used to record
and check signals, measured values and meter readings before transmitting them to
control station and in the opposite direction to transmit commands set point values and
other signals to the switchgear and actuators. The modern RTU is a sophisticated
recording instrument and have recording performance of Digital Fault Recorder (DFR).
In addition, some advanced RTUs will provide an extensive sequence of event recorder
(SER). Nowadays the RTU functionality is addressed using Intelligent Electronic
Devices (IED), and integration network using digital communications. IED is any device
incorporating one or more processors with the capability to receive or send data / control
from or to an external source. IEDs are indeed a good addition to the data-recording
infrastructure needed for a comprehensive understanding of substation equipments. They
interconnect the integrated load dispatching computer system and backup equipment over
the WANs. The substation controllers must provide the control center systems with real-
time data at all times to ensure rapid switching to backup equipment and continuity of
data delivery.

3. COMMUNICATION TECNIQUES IN WIDE AREA NETWORK:

WANs must ensure adequate bandwidth to transmit real-time data within a certain length
of time even under heavy network traffic conditions. The WANs must also provide
redundant network paths and path switching so no data is lost when a network path fails.
Some of the Data Transmission Protocols which are used for communication in WAN
using Internet are as specified below:
3.1 Data Transmission Protocol:
There are two types of IP (Internet Protocols):
3.1.1 TCPs (transmission control protocols) that deal with setting up interconnections
and the reliability of data transmission, and

Fig: Schematic of Transmission Protocol

3.1.2. UDPs (user data gram protocols): These focus primarily on connectionless
transmission efficiency. For remote supervisory control of power systems that can handle
telemeter measurement, binary state data, and control request information, real-time
delivery with the highest standard of reliability is critically important. Moreover, in
contrast to conventional HDLC (high-level data link control) communication schemes
assuming connectivity between one RTU and one control center, in the wide-area
distributed topology that we are proposing, supervisory control information is provided to
multiple control centers at the same time. This calls for a very sophisticated protocol
supporting excellent data transmission efficiency, responsiveness, and the ability to
ascertain states very rapidly. Based on a comprehensive assessment of these special
requirements, we adopted UDP as the protocol for basic data transmission, and a scheme
guaranteeing failsafe delivery of data for the application level protocol.
CONCLUSION:
This paper described the implementation of WANs interconnected SCADA system using
servers and substation controllers. Up to now, most SCADA systems have been
implemented using proprietary equipment, but here a way of implementing such systems
over an IP network and taking full advantage of generic, general-purpose equipment and
systems while maintaining the same high standard of reliability has been described.
Lastly as stated in the July 2001 issue of Wired Magazine by S.Silbeman: The best minds
of electricity R&D have a plan: Every node in the power network of the future will be
awake, responsive, adaptive, price-smart, ecosensitive, real-time, flexible, humming-and
interconnected with everything else.

REFERENCE:
Papers:
1. Integration of SCADA Connected to WAN: Mitsuya Kato, Tatsuyuki Suzuki, and
Katsufumi Watashiki.
Hitachi Review Volume 53 (2004), Number 3
2. Data Integration and Information Exchange for Enhanced Control and Protection
of Power Systems: Mladen Kezunovic.
Proceedings of the 36th Hawaii International Conference on System sciences-2003
3. Control Centers with Open Architectures: Gilberto P.Azevedo, Aryu L.Oliveira
IEEE Computer Applications in Power, Volume 14, Number 4.
4. Plan Head for Substation Automation: Steve Haacke, Sam Border, Dehn Stevens,
and Bob Uluski.
IEEE Power & Energy, Volume 1, Number 2, March/April 2003
5. Substation Integration Pilot Project: Tim Nissen, Doug Peterchuck
IEEE Power & Energy, Volume 1, Number 2, March/April 2003
6. Substation Automation Technologies and Advantages: Scott Bricker, Lew Rubin
Turan Gonen.
IEEE Computer Applications in Power, Volume 14, Number 3, July 2001