Case Study: ABB, Colombia

Electrical substation upgrade: connecting ABB MicroSCADA suite to Oracle using DataHub

A key task for ABB in Colombia is upgrading electrical substations. The ABB development team is always looking for new tools for their substation automation systems to make operation easier, and to provide as much information as possible for the system operators.

One of the latest developments was the addition of a database to their Substation Automation System. The Substation Automation equipment used by ABB is designed according the 61850 standard. The idea of adding a database was to allow the operator to access valuable information stored over long periods of time (2-4 years).

“As with most SCADA systems, the trends graphics and the historical data are stored temporarily,” said one member of the development team. “Your typical substation equipment is designed to have no moving parts. It uses a small, solid state disk to store data, which is not big enough to store information for long periods of time.”

The ABB substation automation system uses ABB’s MicroSCADA suite. One of the functions of that software is to provide a gateway between the IEC 61850 data protocol and OPC. Using the information available in OPC, the development team chose the DataHub® from Cogent (a subsidiary of Skkynet) to interface between MicroSCADA and Oracle, storing process information in a network disk.

“We found the DataHub to be a powerful, user-friendly software package that allows us to bridge between our OPC server and Oracle,” said a member of the development team. “The support of the Cogent team was great. The DataHub is a very good complement to the IEC 61850 technology. We can save data in the Oracle database, and also monitor live data in the DataHub data browser. The first prototype is now in a testing period, and is running well.”