Benefits:
1) Increased Health and Safety
The primary benefit for industrial control systems in general, including
SCADA, is health and safety. Being able to understand the environment in which
workers are being dispatched to or entering can give you the critical advantage
in keeping them safe.
For example, in a mining environment, sensors can relay information
across the DMR Tier 3 network that can report if the mine is stable or if there
are harmful chemicals in the air. With this information, the correct and safe
course of action can be taken from there.
In a utility or water utility environment, information stating that
there is a power line on the ground that’s energized can prevent loss
of life. There are many benefits of understanding the physical world in which
workers are being sent into.
2) Minimization of threat or exposure
The second benefit of operating industrial control systems over DMR Tier
3 is the ability to control and minimize threat or exposure that is created
when there is a failure or fault.
When a power line goes down, an industrial control system or SCADA
system can detect this, particularly if there is a monitor that can alert
Control that a pole is down or a line is actually touching the ground. Not only
can workers be warned of this, but the fault area can be remotely isolated and
turned off to protect people around it. This includes workers as well as the
public in general.
3) Protection of Assets
Protecting assets is the third benefit. Assets can be protected through
prevention, for example when a fault is identified such as an overvoltage
condition, the exposure that transformers downstream have to overvoltage can be
minimized.
Some transformers are multimillion-dollar assets, in avoiding an
overvoltage condition assets can be protected. In understanding the exposure a
transformer has had to overvoltage, you can get the same equivalent life cycle
out of the asset through managing load or reducing the threshold of load if it
has seen overvoltage multiple times.
Protecting assets and optimizing asset life is the key function of all
industrial control systems.
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