SCADA Architecture Block Diagram is important for the students. In modern Electrical technology, SCADA is a crying need for electrical substations and industrial organizations with a view to establishing communication. Here operators can easily monitor line fault type, line fault distances, loads, demand factors can easily with 3-D graphical representation. In this article, we are going to see the architecture and block diagram of the SCADA System. Let’s discuss.
Full form of SCADA and it’s objective:
The full form of SCADA is Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. The main milestones of a SCADA system are,
- Operating and establishing communication with different types of sensors and actuators.
- Operation of single or multiple machines from local or remote locations through Human Machine Interface.
- To control bunch of operations from a central room.
- To operate and control multiple operations and acquire data, vital parameters such as frequency, phase shift, load, demand factors.
Where we use this technology?
The SCADA system is used by:
- Power substations
- large industrial organizations
- private as well as government product manufacturers
- mass traffic controlling systems
- Even you may get surprise to hear when you’ll travel by bus or airplanes, your movement will be monitored by smart travel agencies through SCADA.
SCADA Architecture Block Diagram
First of all, let’s see the SCADA Architecture Block Diagram system to understand its actual operating mechanism.
In the abovee SCADA Architecture Block Diagram diagram, you can see there are so many devices and systems. Here I divide the whole system into five levels to understand the working of each part of the SCADA system.
Level 0 (Sensors/Actuators):
Firstly, the ground-level/Level 0 devices that actually communicate with the physical environment.
Different types of sensors and actuators come under this level.
Now, questions may arise in your mind that what is sensor and actuator?
Senor and Actuator:
- Sensor word relates to word “sense”.
- A sensor is a device that can sense the physical signal such as temperature, light, smoke, moisture etc and coverts it to electrical or electronic signals.
- For an example we can measure the water flow using a flow sensor.
- We use flow sensor, pressure sensor, LDR, and many more sensors in a SCADA system.
- The actuator is a device that makes an electrical or electronic signal to physical or mechanical signal. For example if we want to control the flow of a liquid using an electrical method we can use control valve.
Level 1 (Programing Devices):
- PLC(Programmable Logic Controller), RTU(Remote Terminal Unit) exists in this level.
- Suppose, you are leader of your team. Then your workers have to obey your instructions. Similarly, programable devices directly control the ground-level devices such as sensors and actuators.
Connectivity with LAN and WAN network:
- A SCADA system establish with only LAN(local area network) or a combination of both local and WAN(wide area networks).
- Look at the above block diagram. Here i mention two programable devices. One is PLC and another is RTU. In this system, PLC assists to establish communication with LAN. On the other hand, RTU assists to establish communication with WAN.
- Due to realize the system more clearly, i mention the both devices in above block diagram.
Level 2 (Local Control and HMI):
- Generally, The computers are connected with programable devices are belonging to this level.
- We all know that, our brain or neurological signal controls our all physical activities. In this case, the devices are instructed by the software installed in these computers.
- The operators operate the computers.
Level 3 (Coordination):
- In this level the computers are come to a coordination system.
- Generally, these computers are connected to multiple plants.
- So, it can help to gather data from different plants from one place.
Level 4 (Central Control):
- This is the crucial level for this system.
- We can take a decession finally after analyzing by brain. In this case, this level is for decession making after analyzing the all kinds of acquired data.
Finally, in this SCADA Architecture Block Diagram article, I try to brief the whole SCADA system in a nutshell. Hoping you enjoy this article very much. If you enjoy this article then stay with us for the following surprises.
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