Sitting in the truck in the field today can be intimidating. A cell phone or two, a radio or two, a laptop, and in a few cases a satellite phone. Working on instrumentation in the field can also be intimidating, with different communications protocols and methods in different substations and at different SCADA locations. There has to be an easier way! On the equipment side IEC 61850 is a solid attempt to fix many of the problems with protocols, but it does not address the communications issues, what to use where and how to use it.
Additionally NERC CIP is demanding more secuirty and not through obscurity. As new crews are trained and move into the field, the first thing people notice is they want more data to do their job and that means more bandwidth. The private radio systems we know and love are just not designed to support many of the emerging demands from the workers in the truck. The Internet grew into one of the largest networks in the world, by hiding much of the complexity from the users. So to can your communications system grow to be more useful and cost effective by hiding the complexity from the users. In the case of the typical truck a single box can replace much of the equipment in the truck for communications, and automatically decide the best method to route the traffic based on bandwidth needs, cost and signal strenght.
It can also queue up traffic to send if you are out of range and send it when it gets a signal. In the world of SCADA and substation equipment – it is possible to use a single box to prioritize and send traffic down fewer communications pipes with more reliabilty, opening the way for low cost implementation of more sensors in the substations, including NERC CIP required entry protections. Smart Energy Alliance solution enables a single IP data communications foundation. Many utilities are struggling to move beyond the current environment which limits growth and flexibility, and results in greater operational costs to manage. New high bandwidth, long range standards like WiMax are emerging, but they demand that the foundation of the traffic be IP based.
One way utilities are doing this is to plan for the move to Voice Over IP (many are already in deployment). In addition, global weather tragedies in recent years highlight the importance of inter-communication capabilities, and IP To The Field is one way to move in that direction.
