Rebuilding an electrical grid to be remotely monitored

and controlled
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Perle Systems Application Note

A national electrical grid implements monitoring

and control
over new shared telecommunications network

Funded by a US federal government agency, major work was needed to restore

the electrical
infrastructure of a middle eastern country. The
project was undertaken by one of the world’s
premier engineering,
construction and project management companies supported by specialist
engineers from a systems integration and consultancy company.

A key task was to build a new multi-million dollar

consolidated fibre optic network to allow the country’s
rebuilt
electrical grid to be remotely monitored and controlled. At the same
time, the new network
would also support secure inter-bank electronic
transfers.

The project meant interfacing Supervisory Control and

Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems to provide
electricity supply monitoring
and switching functions. SCADA technology uses reliable serial COM
ports to monitor the status of connected equipment as well as interfacing
with Remote Terminal Units
(RTU’s) for switching control at
60 locations nationwide.

Within each electricity switching station, an Ethernet

network was used to connect routers and network
switches. This meant
finding a way to provide a serial over Ethernet solution to the SCADA
system for
monitoring and controlling inputs on the RTU’s.

Perle worked closely with the systems integration and

consultancy companies to ensure the serial to
Ethernet solution met
the customer’s precise requirements. Perle’s 8-port 1U
Rack Terminal Servers
provides the solution and the added benefit
of integrating with advanced user authentication and
encryption methods.

Over 200 Perle IOLAN Terminal

Servers were installed
in 60 locations, providing connectivity between
networked 3Com switches,
remote terminal units, and SCADA servers. This cutting edge solution
from
Perle now provides national electrical grid switching and monitoring
systems through a fibre optic
based wide area network.

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