The project for the installation of the gas transmission system’s remote process control information system (SCADA IS) has been successfully completed and the system has been put into operation. SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is a mission-critical system through which the Lithuanian gas transmission system operator AB Amber Grid manages a large and complex network of trunk gas pipelines and technological facilities.
During the project, the old TEMEKA system, which had served well for more than 20 years, was replaced by a new, modern, technologically advanced system with significant potential for further development.
The main components of the new SCADA IS are:
– Yokogawa Electric Corporation’s FAST/TOOLS® (Flexible Advanced System Techniques) product for the efficient control of production and technological processes (base component).
– Oracle DB (Historian) – a database for collecting and processing historical data;
– SAP Business Objects BI Suite – a powerful business analytics and reporting tool that enables drill-down analysis of collected data and creation of desired reports.
– Failure Analysis Tool (FA), which allows for a detailed analysis of events (incidents, accidents) that have occurred in the gas transmission system over time and to identify possible causes of incidents.
The SCADA system provides a high frequency (every 3 seconds) and a detailed analysis of the accident and incident data. The SCADA system scans the gas transmission system network and collects data from all technological objects: 70x gas distribution stations (DSS), 5x gas metering stations (DAS), 2x gas compressor stations (DKS), 2x gas pressure limiting units (DSRM), 27x gas pressure monitoring points (DSMT), more than 200x gas metering devices (FC/PTZ/TZ), 15x gas chromatographs, and manages more than 200 telemetered line taps (shut-offs) installed in the trunk pipelines and their branches. The system reads more than 11,000 different parameters (data points) in near real time using main or backup communication lines.
The new SCADA is integrated with 4 of the customer’s internal systems (GIS, TVIS – asset management, SIMONE – modelling of gas flows and leak detection, DAPDS – gas metering).
As SCADA manages critical energy (gas) infrastructure, special attention is paid to ensure system availability, reliability and security. The system ensures the highest requirements and performance:
– 99.999% („five nines”) system availability, i.e. the system can be unavailable to customers for only 5 minutes per year;
– Quadruple system reliability. Critical IT equipment components are protected from failures, accidents, natural disasters) by using a redundant quadruple HAC (High Availability Computing) configuration, i.e. the system is installed on 4 servers, in two geo-redundant data centres. The system operates in Active-Hot Standby mode;
– Oracle DB Extended RAC cluster is the highest database reliability;
– Secure and reliable data transfer to external users using a WS-Security compliant web services component;
– IT security assurance using IBM Qradar SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solution. Proactive fight against internal and external threats in real time by collecting and analysing logs generated by the company’s internal (technological) network equipment and system application software. When anomalies or potential threats to IT security are detected, the System automatically reacts and sends an alert to the specific persons responsible for the company’s cyber security.
The successful implementation of the new SCADA IS has enabled a qualitative step forward in terms of efficiency, flexibility, reliability and security in the management of the gas transmission system in order to achieve the objectives set out in the National Energy Independence Strategy.
The implementation of this highly complex system was carried out by a joint effort of Yokogawa Europe Solutions, Elsis TS and Elsis PRO.
