The project of installation of the remote technological process control information system (SCADA IS) of the gas transmission system has been successfully completed – the system has been put into operation. SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is an information system of the critical importance for the gas transmission system operator AB Amber Grid, with the help of which a large and complex main gas pipeline network with all technological objects is controlled and operated.
During the project implementation, the old TEMEKA system, which has performed well for more than 20 years, was replaced by a new, modern, technologically advanced system with great potential for further development.
The main components of the new SCADA IS:
- „Yokogawa Electric Corporation“ FAST/TOOLS® (Flexible Advanced System Techniques) software product for efficient production and technological process control (key component).
- Oracle DB (Historian) – database for historical data storage and processing;
- SAP Business Objects BI Suite – a powerful business analytics and reporting tool that allows to perform drill-down analysis of available data and create customized reports.
- Failure Analysis Tool (FA) – allows to perform detailed analysis of events (incidents) in the gas transmission system in time and to determine possible causes.
The SCADA system scans the gas transmission system technological network at high frequency (every 3 seconds) and collects data from all technological objects: gas distribution stations, gas metering stations, gas compressor stations. gas pressure limitation units, gas pressure monitoring points, gas metering devices (flow computers and PTZ/TZ volume correctors), gas chromatographs, and controls more than 200 telemetric line valves (closing devices) installed on the main gas pipelines and their branches.The system reads more than 11,000 different parameters (data points) using main or reserve communication lines.
The new SCADA is integrated with 4 internal customer systems (GIS, TVIS – asset management, SIMONE – gas flow modeling and leak detection, DAPDS – gas accounting).
SCADA manages critical energy (gas) infrastructure, therefore special attention is paid to ensuring system reliability, security and availability. The system has the following features:
- 999% (“five nines”) system availability, i.e. the system may not be available to users for only 5 minutes per year;
- Quadruple system reliability. Protection of critical IT equipment components from failures, accidents, natural disasters) is ensured by using a redundant quad HAC (High Availability Computing) configuration, i. the system is installed on 4 servers in two geographically separated data centers (geo-redundancy). The system operates in the “Active-Hot Standby” mode;
- Highest database reliability – Oracle DB Extended RAC cluster implementation;
- Secure and reliable data transfer to external users using a WS-Security compliant web services;
- IT security using IBM Qradar SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solution. It provides an opportunity to proactively fight with internal and external threats. The tools used for the solution collect logs in real time, generated by the customer’s internal (technological) network equipment and system application software, analyze them and, upon detecting anomalies or potential threats to IT security, send an alert to specific cyber security officers and persons.
Successful implementation of new SCADA IS allowed to take a qualitative step forward – to increase the efficiency, flexibility, reliability and security of the gas transmission system control in order to achieve the goals set in the National Energy Strategy.
The implementation of this extremely complex system was carried out jointly by Yokogawa Europe Solutions B.V., UAB Elsis TS and UAB Elsis PRO.