Modernization of critical infrastructure

A leading system integrator approached us in the need of a proper solution for critical infrastructure. Switchgear that distributed energy to a huge international airport operated with Modbus RTU and had to be connected to an IEC61850 control system.

The complexity of this project was quite high since the straightforward Modbus protocol had to be converted to a lot of different IEC61850 communication types like MMS, GOOSE and Commands including Select Before Operate. Mapping the Modbus values to such extensive transmission channels required a possibility to program logic with various complexity within the gateway itself.

The system integrator wasn’t familiar with the IEC61850 protocol, which means that our technical services department had to help from the initial request during configuration, testing until verification of the overall solution and throughout the acceptance test from the system integrators’ customer which was the airport operator. The required IEC61850 file with all required details had to be created and adjusted to various requests during the process.

In the end, all 260 switches and circuit breakers were equipped with an SG-gateway each and are still up and running successfully without a single downtime.

Energy saving for industrial production

A major chemical company with several production facilities around the globe requested a solution that could interconnect industrial and energy communication networks.

The reason was, that the company had extremely high energy bills due to massive consumption peaks.

The production lines didn’t provide any information about the actual power consumption, so the customer decided to integrate all available information from their own power distribution network in their industrial control center.

To be able to do so, a solution was needed that could interconnect the communication from both worlds – the industrial production and the energy distribution. That way, live data from the power distribution network including power quality and consumption could be fed into the industrial PLCs. This enabled the state of the art industrial PLCs to handle the required load shedding to keep the consumption on a stable level which results in high energy quality and low energy costs.

With the Ixxat SG-gateways they got a solution that was easy to integrate as a transparent interface between the power distribution grid and the industrial control equipment.

Connection of a substation backup system to a central SCADA

A well-known solution provider for battery-based DC backup systems uses the SG-gateway for direct integration of their back-up power systems into a central control room via IEC 61850. Due to required versatility and existing components, the local back-up control system uses Modbus-TCP. To offer integrated maintenance and control in the utilities’ SCADA system, large numbers of data points need to be exchanged. 

The customer selected the Ixxat SG-gateway due to the integrated WebPLC for local data-processing as well as the flexibility: The same backup systems can now also be connected to other systems, including industrial and IIoT networks – opening new markets for the customer. The HMS team assisted with the generation of the data point lists and configuration of the Ixxat SG-gateways. Thus, the customer could do first field-installations for a nationwide traffic control system within a few weeks after initial request!