SCADA system upgraded
Down-time kept to a minimum
ESB Networks SCADA system has been upgraded, with the upgrade going live at 8.15pm on Monday December 7th. Final approval for upgrading the SCADA system from ABB Spider 10 to the latest ABB SCADA system available, Network Manager 3 (NM3), was given in November and the upgrade was completed on time, to cost and to specification by a team comprising personnel from Operations Systems Support and ABB.
A critical requirement of the upgrade was that system downtime be kept to a minimum. The changeover was completed in 15 minutes, a result of the attention to detail given to the associated work of hardware replacement, operating system and application upgrade and database management over the previous 12 months.
The acronym of many IT systems obscures the key role they play in the day to day functioning of the business: the delivery of service to customers and the meeting of regulatory targets. SCADA stands for Supervisory, Control and Data Acquisition and in the electricity industry, it is synonymous with the safe and effective operation of networks. SCADA is used by ESB Networks to monitor and control more than 560 110kV and 38kV substations on the system. ESB Networks has also developed and extended SCADA to the control of 1,050 switches on the 10kV and 20kV overhead networks.
From the network operations perspective, the primary role of SCADA is rapid response to fault isolation and restoration of supply to customers. Faults and unsafe conditions can be isolated and supply may be restored through alternative routing within a matter of minutes.
The system plays a crucial role in assisting Network Technicians in fault hunting and isolation by providing details of the type of fault, outlet and network pre-sectionalising. It is also linked into the Operations Management System (OMS) which provides information on outage and restoration times to the National Customer Call Centre.
Key benefits of the system upgrade:
Single SCADA system for the ESBN business: The upgrade combined the two separate SCADA systems based in Leopardstown and Wilton into a single system for the medium and high voltage networks.
Operation flexibility: The system now allows the business full operation flexibility in the management, control and operation of the networks through SCADA and OMS.
Security&resilience: The new system meets the appropriate security standards for SCADA systems, ISO 17799 and NERC CIP 001-009. The emergency backup system, in Wilton, caters for a catastrophic failure of the main system, in Leopardstown.
Scalability: Capacity to accommodate future embedded generation in addition to the existing 500MW and further substations&network devices.
System information: Real-time SCADA data and archived data are readily available to users on the Corporate LAN .
