SCADA and Central Applications

An introduction
Course map
 Outline of the lecture

• Power System Operation

- Centralised Control Applications - an
example

• SCADA
- SCADA architecture & Components
- SCADA system functions
- Non functional aspects
 Power System Operation
• System-wide monitoring, planning & optimisation
for reliable and cost efficient operation of the
power system
• Time scale: seconds to hours.

Normal

Restorative Alerted

Emergency
Deregulation– in
theory

GenCo GenCo GenCo GenCo

Wholesale level - Transmission

Customer
Retailer Retailer

Retail level - Distribution

Customer Customer Customer Customer

Deregulation – in practice

Area 4
Area 5
Area 2

Area 1 Area 3
Coordination between actors
Example – root event
1. Step-up transformer
insulation fault
2. Fault is detected by
protection system
3. Trip signal sent to
breaker to disconnect
generator

TSO – Frequency control

3. TSO – Maintenence
2. 1.
TSO - Frequency Control
1. Frequency dip detected at
generators committed to
3. Load Frequency Control
leads to automatic
6. increase of output
2. Continuous under-
TSO frequency measured are
sent to SCADA system
using IEC 60870-5-101
2. 3. Control room operator
activates secondary
reserve by issuing order
to GenCo via phone.
4. 4. GenCo orders production
1. increase in secondary
reserve.
5. Order for production
GenCO 1. increase sent to plant
from GenCo CC.
5 1. 6. New measurements sent
to neighbouring Grid
Utility using ICCP.
TSO- Repair & Maintenance

1. 1. Fault in transformer
2. sent from SCADA system to
5.
work management system
using
3. e.g. IEC 61968-4
2. Repair crew sent to site
from work dispatch
3. At site, work crew reports
to control centre to initiate
safe switching sequences
4. 4. Station set to manual
control, fault repaired (!) or
report initiated for major
overhaul.
5. After completed
assignment, info on failure
stored in maintenance
database.
 Central control & coordination

• On the deregulated Power market, all actors

- Distribution Network Operators
- Transmission Network Operators
- Generating companies

• All need some central platform to manage their

assets dispersed across large areas.

• Enter – the SCADA system

 Outline of the lecture

• Power System Operation

- Centralised Control Applications

• SCADA
- SCADA architecture & Components
- SCADA system functions
- Non functional aspects
 Power System Control Center Functionality

• Three groups of functions on

SCADA
- Business Management
- Energy Management
- Generation management

BMS EMS GMS

SCADA
 What is SCADA?

Supervisory Control And Data Acquistion

- Collect measurements and status data from the process
- Remotely intervene in the process
- Centralized system platform
- Based on distributed I/O

Applicable Processes
- Oil or Gas prodcution facilities
- Piplelines for gas, oils, chemicals or water.
- Railway/Transportation Process
- Nuclear, Gas, Hyrdo generation plants
The typical control room
 What is controlled by SCADA

• Tap changers
• Switching devices
• Shunt capacitor/reactor
• Generator setpoints
• Excitation & power output
• Sequential control
 SCADA architecture

Reference: C37.1-2007 IEEE Standard for SCADA and Automation

 SCADA Components
Human Machine Interface - HMI

• Communication between operator

and machine
• Input
- Mouse, keyboard, touch screen
• Output
- Screen, audio, print-outs or mimic
board
• A weak link
- Information
overload/misinterpretation
SCADA components
Application Servers
• Application servers provide the computing platform for
the SCADA System, included servers are:
- Real-time database
- Historical database
- Energy Management applications
• State Estimation
• Optimal/Dispatcher Powerflow
• Voltage Stability Assessment
• Etc….
- Geographic Information Systems
• Distribution Management
SCADA Components
System Configuration Servers

• Allows configuration of the SCADA system

environment, typical servers include:
- Data engineering of the SCADA system providing manual
data entry into the SCADA topology database including
lidnes, circuitbreakers, stations, …..

- SubstationdDevice configuration, such as IED

configuration tools and databses of IED configuration.
Remote access tools for configuration
Data Engineering
RUN TIME ENVIRONMENT
ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT RUN TIME ENVIRONMENT

DE 400

Data Entry A-

B-

Graphical Editor
C-

Forms

Import

Customer's Oracle Avanti Present

MDB Data Loading PDB
Data Source

Picture
generator Picture files
 Data Engineering

RUN TIME ENVIRONMENT

ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT RUN TIME ENVIRONMENT

DE 400

Data Entry A-

B-

Graphical Editor
C-

Forms

Import

Customer's Oracle Avanti Present

MDB Data Loading PDB
Data Source

Picture
generator Picture files
SCADA components
Communication Servers

• Variety of servers for communication

- Communication to other Control centers using ICCP
- Communication to office applications
 SCADA components
Communication Front End
• Manages communication with the field devices
• Supports communication with variety of protocols
• Cyclic polling and event based communication, provides
messages queuing
 SCADA Components
Remote Terminal Unit - RTU
• A remote terminal unit (RTU) is a microprocessors-
controlled electronic device that interfaces objects in the
physical world to a distributed control systems or SCADA
by transmitting telemetry data to the system, and by
using messages from the supervisory system to control
connected objects.
 Communication Topologies

• Radial serial circuit

• Multi-drop circuit

Reference: C37.1-2007 IEEE Standard for SCADA and Automation

 Networked solutions

Communication between Master Station (Front End) is

via TCP/IP over a shared Wide Are Network

Reference: C37.1-2007 IEEE Standard for SCADA and Automation Systems

Communication Principles

• Cyclic Polling
- Front-End communication server requests data periodically
from each RTU.
- Period times vary from 2-4 up to 10-15 seconds.
- Real-time?

• Report By Exception
- Cyclic polling as above
- RTU only responds if a value has changed

• Balanced protocols
- The RTU can send a request to be polled by the Front-End
Communication
• Wide Area Network
- Analog point to point and multi-point modem networks
- Frame relay/Cell relay type point to point and multi-point
networks
- Wireless Radio/Satellite networks
- Fiber-optic based networks

• Protocols
- Modbus
- Profibus
- IEC60870-5-101,104
- DNP 3
- IEC61850-90-2
- IEC60870-6-ICCP (between control centers)
 Distributed Network Protocol (DNP)
• Designed specifically for SCADA systems, i.e. a data
acquisition and control communication protocol
• Predominantly a SCADA to RTU/IED or RTU/IED to
RTU/IED communication
• Used in Electric automation and prominent in the
North and South America, Australia
• Open Standard, not owned or control by a single
private organization. All vendors have a say in the
design and specification
 IEC 60870-5-101/104

• International standards for open transmission of SCADA telemetry

and control information

• Provides detailed functional description for telecontrol equipment

and systems for controlling geographically widespread
processes and specifically intended for electrical industries

• When reference to 60870-5 in the context of SCADA systems is

made it is usually for 60870-5-101/104 titled “Companion
Standard for basic telecontrol tasks.

• 101 protocol intended for transport of data over serial links

• 104 protocol is a TCP/IP implementation of 101.
101 & 104 message types
101 & 104 message types - control
 IEC 60870-6
• Inter Control-center Protocol (ICCP) or TASE.2
• To enable data exchange between control centers of:
- Measurements
- Time-tagged data, measurement series
- Events
• Some variants exist, latest version TASE.2 based on
MMS most popular presently.
 IEC 61850-90-2
• Using Logical Nodes and Attributes from IEC 61850 also in
the SCADA system.
• Data is carried in MMS over TCP/IP
 Outline of the lecture

• Power System Operation

- Centralised Control Applications

• SCADA
- SCADA architecture & Components
- SCADA system functions
- Non functional aspects
SCADA functions

• Data acquisition
• Analog and discrete values
• Event and alarm processing
• Event and alarm
• Control
• Tap changer
• Shut capacitor/reactor
• Switching devices
• Generator excitation (AGC)
• Data storage, archiving and analysis
 Data acquisition

• Points
- Measured values
• Pseudo points
- Derived values
• Scan
- process by which data
acquisition system
interrogates RTU/IED
• Scanning rate
- 1 sample/2 seconds
• Time skew
- elapsed time between the
first measurement and the
final measurement is
taken
Reference: N orth-Corte Green Control &
SCADA: Data Acquisition (Cont.)

• Measurements and Status Indications Collected

are stored in a Real Time Database.

• The Values are Time tagged in the database.

• As new Values come in from the RTUs/IEDs old values

are overwritten (or archived).
Monitoring and Event Processing

• Events
• Changing positions
• Breaker / Disconnector opens or closes
• Value above/below a threshold
• Equipment activated
• Reactor or capacitor engaged
• Automatic changes
• On load tap changer changes state
• Alarms
• Critical events
• It is a matter of definition
 Alarm and Event Management

Alarm list

Breaker
opens

Event list
Event and alarm

• Events
• Changing positions
– Breaker/Disconnector opens or closes
– Value above/below a threshold
• Equipment activated
– Reactor or capacitor engaged
• Automatic changes
– tap changer changes its position
• Alarms
– Criticality
– Sensitivity
 Monitoring and Event Processing (cont.)

Reference: N orth-Corte Green Control & A utomation of Electric Power

Time stamping

• Sequence of events is often important in analysis of

chains of events

• Time stamping of Events

- As close as possible to the source. For example the IED
that collected the measurement
- Requires time synchronisation of distributed devices
- Additional Time-stamp at Front-End
SCADA: Data Storage, Archiving and
Analysis

• Data Collected from the process is sometimes

archived, this due to many reasons:
• Regulations
• Billing
• Future Load planning
• Performance Audits
• Post Mortem Review, in case of disturbances or
interruptions in the process.

• Changed Values are “archived” at cyclic intervals,

the interval depends on the importance of the
values. Examples of cyclic intervals are: every
scan interval, every 10 seconds or every hour.
Sequence of Events recorders
• Local function implemented in Substation Controller
that keeps a record of all events in the substation

• Not all events are sent to the SCADA system

• SER logfiles can be uploaded to the SCADA system to

enable analysis
 SCADA: Control Functions

• Individual Device Control

• Direct open/close commands to individual devices
• Check-back before Operate function.

• Control Messages to Regulating Equipment

• E.g. Raising or lowering tap changer taps
• Sequential Control
• E.g. in the case of a set of sequential switching steps
to restore power through predefined backup
configuration.
• Automatic Control
• Triggered by an event of lapse of specific time period
that invokes a control actions
• E.g. automatically changing load tab changer due to
voltage set point violation
 Outline of the lecture

• Power System Operation

- Centralised Control Applications

• SCADA
- SCADA architecture & Components
- SCADA system functions
- Non functional aspects
Non functional requirements
Functional requirements specifies what is a system
suppose to do and Non functional requirements
specifies how a system should behave.
• Availability
- the ratio of uptime to the sum of downtime and
uptime.
• Maintainability
- Repairing time for hardware and software
• Scalability
- How easy the system could be expand
• Security
- See SCADA security guest lecture
• Interoperability/Openess
- how easy can the system be integrated with
systems from other vendors
 Measurement Service Performance
Requirements

Reference: C37.1-2007 IEEE Standard for SCADA and Automation

 Non functional requirements
- Performance
• Desired response time should be designed for each SCADA
function. These response time should comply with power
system control and operation procedure.
- Normal state, quasi-steady-state. Response time should meet
the requirements during normal state.
- Emergency state, when power system operation constraints
are violated. SCADA system are engineered to one specific
emergency condition without degrading the performance.

Normal

status

Restoratio Emergency
n status status
 Status Update Performance Requirements

Reference: C37.1-2007 IEEE Standard for SCADA and Automation

 Status Update Performance Requirements

Reference: C37.1-2007 IEEE Standard for SCADA and Automation