SUPERVISORY CONTROL AND DATA ACQUISITION (SCADA) SYSTEMS IN POWER STATIONS

The topic includes a brief description of SCADA systems and has outlined some of the capabilities of such systems over and above supervisory control. The application of digital computer to such systems have provided very powerful tool for system dispatches, so that they can be kept aware of the systems status and can also be provided with automatic loggings, automatic generation control and other operation considerations. This has greatly increased the ability of the system operators to maintain complete and timely information on system conditions and to rapidly take approximate action during trouble periods. It was during the industrial revolution that the importance for the growth and development of industrial sector, wholly recognized. With this came the need for efficient and reliable management of power system. To ensure utilities were reliable supplied to customers SCADA was developed using tone telemetry. Tone telemetry provided centralized monitoring of utility systems and control of remote equipments. Tone telemetry was usually centralized and all functions were displayed on the four walls of control room, complete with blinking light, knobs gauges charts and other miscellaneous devices. This provided the operator with nominal information through the reliability and expandability of equipment was marginal. The quest for reliability was the main driving factor for improvement of utility equipment. Reliability factors apart from system reliability include control security, data accuracy and ease of system expansion. With the advent of minicomputers, utilities replaced their tone telemetry equipment with solid state remote terminal units(RTUs) and minicomputer hosts which were later replaced by microcomputer.