Reviving your scada and telemetry
January 2010
Data Acquisition & Telemetry
By Jaco Hoogenboezem, Supervisory & Control Expertise SA
If you are frustrated with your scada or telemetry system for one or more of the following reasons, migrating might be easier than you think and the return on investment quite compelling:
* Your scada is already a few versions older than the current release.
* You have a radio system with several remote stations, and you are not satisfied with the resolution of your incoming data (time interval is several seconds).
* Linking your scada to other higher level systems is a major undertaking, not to mention the reliability of your historical data.
* You would like to be able to automatically send e-mails or SMSs on events rather than rely on an operator to inform your maintenance personnel.
* You would like a remote Web-type interface.
* When your scada/historian stopped working during the night, you were told it was due to an incompatibility between the service pack your IT department loaded and the version of scada that you have.
* Your radio or remote terminal unit failed to communicate and then regained communication for no apparent reason.
There are different levels and phases of adoption
If it is just the scada that is a problem, it is important to compare the upgrade features versus the cross-grade costs. If the upgrade of the scada from the current to the latest version can be accomplished through an auto upgrade option, this means very little engineering hours. However, if enabling new features like e-mail, messaging, alarm re-direction and reporting requires re-engineering hours, then these costs can quickly become a factor, dependent on the expertise with both the old and new versions.
Some possible pitfalls to be considered and for which you should seek answers from the supplier before making your decision are:
* Can your old and new scada be run in parallel for comparison before sign off?
* Will the new scada be able to communicate with all your hardware devices?
* Make certain about the extent of scripts and VB-code as well as special tricks that may have been implemented in your old scada.
From experience, a systematic approach can be applied by generating a spreadsheet with all the different components of the old scada, and then running a script to generate the new scada. With the object orientated way new generation scada’s work, this is already a form of documenting your system.
Typical items that need to be in that spreadsheet include:
* Navigation layout.
* List of each type of display/pop-up or control per page.
* Database with all relevant range and alarm fields.
* Alarm displays.
* Reporting.
* Schedules (event and time).
* Interfaces to higher level and third party systems including Excel.
What about hardware?
On the hardware side, technology has changed a lot over the last few years and features that were unheard of a few years ago are now possible. Having a radio telemetry system and being able to get trends on bearing vibration was not possible before, now, with distributed network protocols for telemetry like DNP3, it has become quite affordable.
These days radios have their own built-in diagnostics. So although they act as the transport medium, they are also just another station in the telemetry system, complete with diagnostic trends on scada for conditions like temperature, error rate and signal to noise ratios.
For more information contact Jaco Hoogenboezem, Supervisory & Control Expertise SA, +27 (0)83 282 5706, [email protected], www.sce.co.za
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