White Paper on SCADA reporting
Our White Paper on SCADA reporting also appeared in Pumps & Systems – for those who don’t know it, an excellent US industry magazine. You can find the online version of the magazine at www.pump-zone.com.
What’s the White Paper about? Essentially it looks at where SCADA and telemetry reporting currently stands for a typical lift station network – compared with where it could be – and where the utility asset managers and operations managers would like it to be.
Operational Cost Breakdown
Anyone who has implemented a SCADA system, or even played with a SCADA package can tell you how easy it is to create an animation on the HMI that depends on a data point. For example, displaying a well emptying and filling as the level “tag” falls and rises in value. Or a motor changing from blue to red as the temperature tag increases in value.
It’s probably the first thing that you get taught on the SCADA course, or get shown by the salesperson when he/she demonstrates ease of use of that SCADA platform.
Reporting is a whole different question. There is the challenge of finding where the real data exists in the system, understanding data integrity and getting to grips with the reporting interface. But the bigger challenge for many end users and SI’s is that creating a good report means getting to grips with relational database concepts, and that’s a lot harder than linking a process value to a graphical animation.
As Paul Francis, MultiTrode CTO, said:
Reporting has always been a challenging aspect of any SCADA platform. Visualization and trending tools were some of the earliest adopted elements of SCADA systems and hence matured long before reporting interfaces did. Developing useful reports can also be more of a technical challenge than making a nice graphical interface for your plant or collection system; in part due to the nature and structure of the underlying data.”
Away from the mechanics of reporting, there are other challenges. For example, data acquisition in the field. Typical PLC and RTU systems aren’t bringing 100’s of tags back to the SCADA system. That requires a level of design that is rarely catered for. With minimal data, it’s hard to generate much in the way of reports – and this may well have contributed to the low expectations of asset managers.
Reports - Pump Efficiency Changes
And in the US, the de facto standard for water and wastewater telemetry protocols is Modbus. This works against any attempt to get asset rich data. (See, for example, DNP3: Part One or DNP3: Part Two).
None of this means that it’s too difficult to get reports that will cut operational costs or provide asset reports to allow better capital allocation. It’s just important to understand the different roadblocks that lie in the way.
If you want to read the SCADA Reporting White Paper you will have to fill in a short registration form (unless you already have a MultiTrode website login).
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