Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition

Certified information systems auditor (CISA) Barry Munns told Builder AU sister site ZDNet Australia the IT auditing profession had “largely ignored” moves by energy, gas and water utilities to adopt open standards for their telemetry and telecontrol infrastructure, often known as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and the dangers this created. These systems allow remote control or monitoring of infrastructure, such as substations or water pipes.

“There’s a bit of a generational change that’s happening,” Munns said.

“Moving away from fairly closed system, proprietary type structures — software and operating systems, to more open systems or public type systems. All the risks associated with things like hacking and denial of service, those risks are now very much coming to the fore in SCADA.”

Munns has audited such systems for Energy Australia, and recently joined the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).

“SCADA telemetry and telecontrol systems are moving towards that open arrangement and that inter-connected kind of model,” he said.

Source and more information: builderau

The selling point of the new CompactDAQ USB-based data acquisition system, said National Instruments (NI), is its flexibility—something that is required in current platforms because of their broad set of applications.

According to Brian Betts, data acquisition technical marketing group manager at NI, data acquisition requirements change, depending on who you ask.

For research and design engineers, it’s gathering real-world data to validate test models. For engineers doing manufacturing test, it’s a data acquisition system at the end of the production line that validates the functionality of a device. For process engineers, it is part of the control system integrated into supervisory control and data acquisition, where data is gathered remotely at different parts around a process facility.

“Vendors designed different architectures for data acquisition as a result of this diversity,” said Betts.

Unfortunately, while the PC-based system is the most flexible tool for data acquisition, putting it together requires tedious, manual installation, Betts observed. “You have to connect a data acquisition board to signal conditioning, connect your connector panel and terminal blocks, and write software. Flexibility gets traded-off for ease-of-use.”

Citing Wired Magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory, Betts stated that there are more data acquisition channels that require a custom set of requirements than that of common, high-volume applications.

Source and more information: eetasia

Semtech Corp. (Nasdaq: SMTC), a leading supplier of analog and mixed-signal semiconductors for communications, portable devices, computers, and industrial equipment, today announced the SX8801R, an ultra low power, high-resolution system-on-chip (SoC) for data acquisition from micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) sensors in battery-powered consumer, medical and industrial systems.

The SX8801R features Semtech’s ZoomingADC(TM) capability that combines a 16-bit analog/digital converter (ADC) with a 10-bit preamplifier to allow the device to “zoom in” or amplify a small portion of the analog signal and apply the full 16-bit ADC to that part of the signal. The award-winning ZoomingADC compensates for large offsets without saturation or resolution losses, and can be re-focused on different parts of a signal for different applications.

The SX8801R also includes a microprocessor and 22 kBytes of ROM for customer programmable processing with the output sent to either a serial link or to an LCD. The SX8801R directly reads pressure, temperature, magnetic, chemical or other Wheatstone bridge-based sensors, ranging from 5V to 2 mV. With a reference, the device can also access most voltage-generating sensors.

The low-power SX8801R is designed for battery-operated devices with an input voltage range of between 2.4V and 5.5V. The device has three pre-amplifiers and special logic-block power gating features to allow a designer to specify power consumption for the data acquisition phase in a range between 200uA and 800uA depending upon the number of pre-amps used. At 2kHz, the ADC function draws only 200uA. The microprocessor is also low power, leveraging Semtech’s CoolRISC(TM) processor technology with a real time clock at 2uA and a power-performance ratio of 300uA per MIPS.

Source and more information: businesswire

ITA Holdings, Inc. today announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement with eLutions Inc., a private company headquartered in Tampa, Florida, for the acquisition by eLutions of all of the outstanding shares of Supervisor Holdings Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of ITA Holdings, for a purchase price of $575,000. Supervisor Holdings is the parent company of the Wizcon Systems business unit of ITA Holdings, headquartered in Lyon, France and with operations in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Upon closing of the transaction, eLutions will effectively acquire, through its shareholding in Supervisor Holdings, all of the assets and liabilities of the Wizcon Systems business.

The transaction and the definitive agreement have been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of ITA Holdings and eLutions. The board of directors of ITA Holdings has recommended that the ITA Holdings stockholders approve the transaction. The transaction, which is expected to close in early August, is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by ITA Holdings’ stockholders.

Source and more info: yahoo

ABB is supplying a complete integrated power solution including process-critical rectifiers, unique rectifier control systems and current sensors for the biggest aluminium potline ever built.

The 360-pot Sohar aluminium plant in Oman will have a production capacity of 360,000 tonnes and be the biggest aluminium potline in the world when it goes on-stream in March 2008.

Sohar is a joint venture between industry and regional leaders Oman Oil Company, ADWEA (Abu Dhabi Electricity and Water) and Alcan.

ABB’s scope of supply includes five giant 113 kA / 1650 VDC rectifier transformers, the most powerful ever built, five AC 800PEC high-speed control and protection units for the rectifiers, a level-2 SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system for the rectifier station and gas insulated substation, and ABB’s fibre-optic current sensors (FOCS).

Rectifiers are critical components in a smelter potline. They convert AC to DC power which is then passed through the molten electrolyte in the pots to form aluminium. If the rectifiers fail and the line shuts down, the molten aluminium will “freeze” within hours, at a cost of $100 million or more.

Source and more info: e4engineering

Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Friday inaugurated a state-of-the-art Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system of BSES which is expected to reduce fault restoration time by over 60 per cent.

Speaking at the inauguration of SCADA centre at Balaji Estate in Kalkaji, Ms. Dikshit expressed happiness that installation of the system has brought Delhi in the league of global cities like Singapore, Hong Kong and Stockholm and strengthened its claim of becoming a truly world-class city. “I sincerely hope that SCADA will bring about visible improvements in power distribution and reduce the incidence of outages. We are all committed to ensuring that Delhi tops the list of great cities by providing unparallel public services to its residents,” she said.

BSES said the SCADA System — which would cost around Rs.153 crore — would change the face of power distribution in its licensed area and benefit all its 23 lakh customers. The SCADA System Centre will monitor the power distribution system and supply on a real time basis and abnormalities in the system will be immediately flagged and corrective action taken.

Operations of all 117 grid stations in the BSES area would now be remote-controlled through the SCADA control centre.

While 60 grid stations are already online, the remaining will also come into the SCADA fold over the next few months. The first phase of SCADA will cover all the 66/33 kV Grid Stations and the second phase will cover the 11 kV Distribution Network comprising transformers, feeders and lines.

Source and more info: hindu

Hytec Electronics now offers a compact, self contained 1U high rack mounted IOC with six industry pack slots each with a mini signal conditioning card, one PMC slot and a PC104+ processor, with Ethernet network (10/100)MHz, USB, hard disc and 256Mbyte RAM (up to 1Gbyte CompactFlash optional). The 9010 IOC will run with Linux, Windows XP or with the open source RTEMS real time embedded system. Hytec provide software drivers for these operating systems.

As a system component it is available as an EPICS IOC running either RTEMS or Linux, or as an OPC server allowing operation with most Scada packages.

It also supports TCP/IP sockets interface and HTML web browser access.

Six sites are provided for industry packs (IPs), providing a wide range of I/O functions.

An open specification defines the key characteristics ensuring compatibility between suppliers.

A rich mix of functionality is possible by using these plug-in cards.

They are very compact in size and include an ID PROM which aids auto-configuration.

A broad range of products is available from suppliers all over the world.

These include ADC, DAC, I/O, isolated I/O, RS232, RS485, stepper motor controllers and scalers.

In addition a PMC card slot provides access to the wide range of specialist cards.

Each industry pack has a signal conditioning board which allows conditioning and plant isolation to be added.

Source and more info: electronicstalk

The Cadbury’s chocolate factory in Port Elizabeth recently installed a third new chocolate crumb reactor and chose to combine this more advanced technology with its preferred supervisory control and data acquisition (scada) system from Adroit.

Cadbury’s project manager Mike Ehrich explains: “The factory produces all Cadbury’s chocolate for the South African market and even the slightest batching errors can cause significant product and raw material wastage. We therefore consistently look for innovative new products and methodologies to reduce these risks. The Adroit scada provides us with cutting edge innovation, and is also flexible enough for us to try some of our own ideas and innovations.” The new scada system marked a change in the normal configuration including, the use of Control Logic PLCs, the change to Ethernet and fibre-optics for the field I/Os.

Cadbury’s runs Adroit Version 6 on a Windows XP platform from its central management office which controls six different environments installed over the last eight years in the factory. The various powders used in the making of chocolate are weighed and blown into the reactor through valves. Cocoa liquor and water are then added. The reactor is run and vacuum removes moisture from the mixture producing a coarse powder. Vegetable fats are then added to produce the product. To facilitate the three operators being able to perform efficiently, each workstation is fitted with two 19″ screens.

To increase the cost effectiveness of the Adroit scada system, the Adroit Marshalling Agent was extensively used to monitor the digital scan points thus allowing significantly more scan points to be monitored. The new facility has over 8000 scanned tags, 250 digital and 40 analog I/Os measuring and monitoring temperature, pressure and weight among other things. The information is stored in a Microsoft Access database.

Source and more info: instrumentation

GE Fanuc’s latest HMI/SCADA solution, Proficy iFIX4.0, promises new capabilities to users in addition to a variety of enhancements to existing technology.

Proficy FIX users can now experience the latest features of Proficy HMI/SCADA - iFIX 4.0 including new displays with ActiveX, OPC support, VBA and more, ODBC database and Historian connectivity, and productivity packs.

New capabilities are available out of the box, with no display building necessary. Right click and drill into tag details. Right click and instantly trend an alarm variable. Highlight several variables and view them in a tag control panel. Save and recall tag control panel views for future reference.

New graphics tools deliver a variety of drawing productivity tools and advanced capabilities for 3D piping and connected object management without the need for a costly re-configuration.

Source and more info: ferret

Connecting SCADA systems to Red Lion devices has become even easier with the release of OPCWorx. This easy to use software tool allows you to create and configure an OPC server to communicate with the G3 series HMI, the Data Station Plus or the Enhanced Master, as well as any device that supports Modbus. OPC (OLE for Process Control) is an industry standard that allows software components to exchange data.

Most popular SCADA systems can act as OPC clients, and thereby use OPC ’servers’ to perform the actual communications with the field devices.

Any such SCADA package can now communicate with Red Lion products, directly accessing the tags that they contain.

Also, since many of Red Lion’s products can communicate to an unlimited number of devices via several protocols simultaneously, you now have the option to use such a product to concentrate communications data for transfer to a SCADA package via a single OPC connection.

Source and more info: manufacturingtalk