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Module 10 · SCADA & Substation Automation

SCADA & Substation Automation

SCADA architecture, RTUs and IEDs, HMI and the historian, DNP3/Modbus/IEC 60870-5-104, IEC 61850, and where remote-control authority and SCADA/DCS boundaries actually sit in a real utility system.

Everything a substation or generating unit does electrically is invisible to a control-center operator until it's carried up through a real-time data layer — this module builds that layer from the field device upward: RTUs and IEDs converting raw signals into point data, a master station polling or receiving it over DNP3, Modbus, or IEC 60870-5-104, and an HMI and historian turning that stream into something an operator can actually act on and an engineer can later reconstruct.

It also draws a hard line this industry gets sloppy about: IEC 61850's GOOSE and Sampled Values replace copper wiring inside a substation, they don't replace wide-area SCADA to the control center — and a plant's DCS runs its own fast control loops independent of the SCADA link entirely, a boundary Module 11's plant-electrical content picks up from the generation side.

Free related reading in this studio
→ Modbus Address Calculator→ Modbus Register Explorer→ OT Network Architect→ Substation Battery Sizing Calculator

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