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SMP Substation Gateway Automation and Integration Benefits

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Cybectec's SMP Substation Gateway provides utilities with a solution to simplify their automation projects and gain the benefits of integrating their base of installed IEDs.

Integratng IEDs: More Data Means a More Efficient Network

In substations, intelligent electronic devices (IED) are replacing legacy electro-mechanical protection relays to monitor substation equipment.

Integrating IEDs taps into their newly available data, bringing a wealth of benefits—

• Increase engineering personnel efficiency by performing remote device maintenance and configuration
• Improve fault analysis and service restoration by automatically retrieving event files for analysis
• Improve asset management by analyzing operational data and gaining a better understanding of equipment operation
• Reduce maintenance cost by analyzing historical data and performing predictive maintenance instead of periodic maintenance

IED Integration is not a Walk in the Park: Choose the Right Solution

To gain these benefits utilities need to choose a solution that helps them meet the following challenges—

• Organizational—Most of the IEDs are being installed by equipment protection groups. Most of the data being produced by these IEDs will be useful to different organizational groups.
• Technological—In the traditional automation system, a SCADA center connects to a single RTU per substation, using a single protocol, over a single permanent and dedicated link, and collects simple analog and binary data. Modern IEDs use a variety of standard or proprietary protocols to generate data in a large variety of mostly non-standard data formats.
• Security—Devices used in a standalone manner, within an enclosed protected perimeter, are inherently secure. IED integration must be performed in a secure, NERC-compliant, manner.

Get Your Data Out: Providing the Communication Infrastructure

To benefit from IED data, a suitable communication infrastructure must be provided to transport data from the devices to the appropriate control centers.

Port switches, terminal servers or frame relay access devices (FRAD) are often considered for the purpose of connecting IEDs to a control center. These simple devices basically provide a means to extend the communication link of each IED across the enterprise network, to the control center.

However, port switches limit the flow of information in a number of ways—

• By extending the communication link to the control center, the protocol complexity is also exported to the control center.
• Most devices support a single communication link. The port switch extends this link to a single control center.
• Since all IEDs are sharing the same link, the port switch will either require large bandwidth or necessarily introduce higher communication latency.

Integrating IEDs using the SMP Gateway: The Benefits

Cybectec's SMP Substation Gateway is an advanced communications processor that provides the following benefits—

Easy, Effective Access Management

• Provide a secure single point of access to all substation devices.
• Restrict access to authorized users and applications
• Log all access attempts
• Comply with NERC requirements.

Get Rid of Protocol Issues

• Convert IED protocols to control center protocols.
• Handle all protocols problems once, at the substation level
• Provide the control center with a single uniform data model
• Support connections with multiple control centers, each using their own protocol to access their own subset of available data.

Simplify Communication

• Integrate serial and network devices, using a variety of communication links
• Simplify access to IED data using network or dialup connections.
• Provide authorized personnel with remote access to IED maintenance and configuration ports.
• Automatically retrieve and forward event files from protection relays to the appropriate control center application.

Reduce Bandwith Requirements

• Poll devices and process data locally
• Send only significant data to control centers.

Extend Substation Intelligence and Equipment Life

• Implement local automation functions using the built-in Soft PLC.
• Preserve existing investments by integrating both new and legacy equipment and automation systems.