Closing the cover door continued .. a User Initiated Innovation story.

About a year ago I blogged a post describing a User Initiated Innovation [UII] for the SCD5200.  An innovation can be defined as that intersection point where intuition meets invention and you get something new turning up.  The intuition here was obvious.  The door cover would not close when you continue to use thick 1mm2 wire with the higher levels [750v] insulation.. just not enough room. [ In the backblogs..."close the cover-door-click-please"]

The Foxboro SCD5200 Remote Terminal Unit

Now, a year hence.. I thought time to revisit progress on this and portray some of the comparative results so far.

Intrinsic Data Functions

There is a migratory bird that comes down to our Sydney area every late spring. It's a native cuckoo.  I know this bird now but have never seen it.  Only hear it, particularly at 3am in the morning with it's demented calling echoing in the night.  In the daylight though there is no order in the bush. All the trees are crooked and the branches too. I went looking for the bird.That's what I did !, Couldn’t find anything. Lots of trees, sometimes sticks. I had my binoculars up their till my arms and eyebrows hurt. Looking through all the scraggly gum trees with their branches going every which way. Couldn’t see a thing.  There though.. a movement, I saw it.  The picture changed and suddenly I could hear it, see it, and understand that bird on the branch way over there, but now an instant later, it had my full attention. I slowly raised the binoculars.

Switch On Switch Off and Sleep and Wake Up

Power Switch

It's been a while, since I switched on blog.  We make  SCADA technology which has to be there when the chips are down - powered down that is.  Something as simple as a Power Switch can create a whole design controversy.  This blog post is a discussion of how simple something like a Power Switch can get.

Front and centre on the SCD5200 CPU is a big red power switch. It has two states, On and Off.  What I like about this is that is means what it says.  When you switch it on.  Power is applied to the brain of the CPU and it's bus connectors and off you go things start up and operate.  Switch it off, and the power is disconnected again and everything goes dead. Or does it ?..

Distributed Focussed Availability

Distributed and Redundant Systems Architectures

Any automation system component may fail, usually at an inconvenient time. Whenever a failure happens, some part of the operation will be affected.  What and for how long depends on the way in which the automation system is arranged.  This post covers two methods of arrangement.  Distributed on the one hand, where the automation functionality required for different parts of the plant is distributed with the plant. Redundant on the other hand, which centralizes functionality and provides high availability through the provision of a duplicate backup system. Invensys provides both redundant and distributed RTU types to cover many different forms of remote automation architecture.

Close the terminal cover door click, please.

This morning I am traveling to Melbourne Australia for a few days. While there I will be talking to one or two of end users about design - electro mechanical design, of our SCD5200 IO terminal assembly. The unique SCD5200 design has been stable since it's introduction 10 years ago, thereby begging a 'why change it ?' from our team as well as our end users.

SCD5200 remote terminal units are compact with a reasonably high density hard wired IO. The mix of IO type {Discrete,Analog} and DC/AC voltage levels {24,48,129} provides convenience but needs special design consideration.

The potential design change, would be based on a requirement to increase the insulation thickness of the end user wiring connecting to the assembly. No it's not about increased voltage levels, nor about an increase in accuracy, not current rating nor actual wire cross section.

Evolution - Revolution - Techno Modernization Solution

A Technical Evolution [1]

In this series of blog posts, I intend to make some searchable notes on the evolution of control systems hardware.  I say the word evolution carefully here.  What I can see however is that regardless of availability of key technical components, certain evolved arrangements of technology create a requirement for their own continuation. I will be exploring a number of features of this kind of evolution.

Evolution of SCADA Technologies - 1

C25 Remote Terminal Unit

There is nothing quite like working for a controls automation and engineering company for bringing high social-wc3-tech warriors down to earth. Probably uppermost in a controls product manager's mind is the support of long term useful plugged in technology. The automation that manages the control of plant and infrastructure is very static, and I have to say, totally anti-social.  Yes, believe it or not, social networking is NOT required to enable control systems to work.

The photo shows a single board Remote Terminal Unit, originally created in the 1980s using VME bus technology.  This was called the C25.  Although the C25 is now classed as obsolete, there are still many of these in operation on critical infrastructure throughout the world.  These days we replace these older remotes with the newer modular Foxboro RTU technologies.  The fit is close.. but not exact.  Features of the older technology which tend to change are the:-

• Wiring connectors - Older terminations
• Communications - instead of using Bell 202 we might use TCP/IP
• Protocol - instead of using Conitel - we might use DNP3
• User Programs - now here is the real challenge - these were generally built in older languages - early derivatives of BASIC or C programming - these days we might transition these to SALL programming with it's more protected logic code. IEC 1131 standard programming might also be required. 

Many of the components on these boards are difficult to find.  Repairing them is a challenge.  We tend to create newer technologies which try to extend the role and function of the older technologies, with a minimal installation cost.  I decided to read the book by Kevin Kelley - "What Technology Wants".  I believe that there is something about the use of these technologies, which have to remain in place without moving, without disconnecting, and without modification for over 30 years, which has to be explained.  I will be doing more posts on this topic as I embark on my travels in the next month or so.

Modernizing the XY Controller with a 3rd Turtle

Last week I discussed the application specific space saving application of the XY controller.  When having to modernize these, not only do we have to work with the specific constraints of the hardware - [see last weeks post] - but also the fact that at the same time, we might have to jump 40 years in technology.

In this post I extend the conjectured modernization by considering the modernization of an 20th century item of plant control to the 21st century use of lets say semantic technology.  For this example being substation oriented, we should consider going from the Master Slave relay logic direct to it's representation as an IEC 61850 object publication and control. This is not a post about IEC 61850 specifically, but uses that new technology to illustrate the point relating to modernization and re-integration of older technology into the new semantic type technology.

If you have read this far, you might want to know why does that matter ?  I will try to keep to the point in less than 600 words, and the graphic may help, but please read to the end, think for a few minutes and make any comment about modernization you feel relevant.

Postcard from Shanghai

  


Xin Nian Kuai Le ! - Happy New Year ! - From Shanghai

 Dear blog readers,

This week I was fortunate to spend some time with my 'lao pengyou' old friends at the Invensys Facility in Shanghai.

Our Electric Power SCADA RTU product, the SCD5200 / RTU50 is manufactured at the Invensys - Shanghai Foxboro Company Ltd., and it was timely to visit there this week. That is just prior to the 10 day spring festival which starts with Chinese New Year. Much of the Foxboro product is manufactured in Shanghai and has been for the past 40 years or so.  Times have changed, and the factory has recently moved out to the new facility at Feng Pu industrial park, Feng Xian south of Shanghai. There is still a photo of President Reagan opening the original facility in Cao Bao Lu when China first started opening up to the west.

This coming Year of the Dragon promises to be an exciting time for China, and for Invensys as well. Many of the Nuclear Power projects in China will be using our Invensys Systems technology and Nuclear expertise. If you would like to read more on this topic  refer : Invensys Wins Nuclear Project in China.

Thanks so much to the team in Invensys Shanghai for making me feel so welcome ! 

Best Regards

Chris Smith
[Shanghai, China]
The photo of me was taken by one of my esteemed colleagues at one of the new shopping centres in XuJiaHui, Shanghai