SCADA

SCADA stands for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition. So what does this mean? Essentially SCADA is a software package designed to display information, log data and show alarms. This can be graphical and tabular formats, words or pictures. SCADA is used in many industrial processes such as manufacturing, power generation, water and chemical. The size of a SCADA system can vary greatly. SCADA can be used to monitor and control plant or equipment. The control may be automatic, or initiated by operator commands. The data acquisition is accomplished firstly by the RTU’s (Remote Terminal Units, in our case the Metron). The central host will scan the RTU’s or the RTU’s will report in Data can be of three main types. Analogue data (ie real numbers) will be trended (ie placed in graphs). Digital data (on/off) may have alarms attached to one state or the other. Pulse data (eg counting revolutions of a meter) is normally accumulated or counted.