Replacement of the RTU200 to RTU560 in Germany
2011-11-22 - Netz Veltheim GmbH, situated in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany is the operating company of a 220-kV super grid including transformer stations. The electricity network ranges over a large part of Germany with the size of around 4.500km² and supplies around 1.6 Mio. inhabitants.
The old RTU200 equipment, operating since 1995, has been replaced by the new RTU560 solution as well as the old S.P.I.D.E.R. control system has been replaced by Network Manager. It was an advantage for the customer that during the entire migration phase the parallel operation of the S.P.I.D.E.R. control systems and Network Manager was guaranteed. Additionally the transfer of the current S.P.I.D.E.R. system database into the Network Manager database eased the switch. The installation of the new RTU560 in the existing RTU200 cabinets as well as the fact that most of the other existing modules could be used kept the investment costs for the Netz Veltheim GmbH on a low level. During the change process the system was fully functional which reduced the field work to 2-5 days. An advantage for the customer was that the data points from the old RTU200 were copied in the replacing RTU560 and were fully configurable during the whole process. This led to the fact that the connection between the single RTUs and the control system was only 2-3 hours down. Furthermore the customer did not have to implement any additional equipment since the power supply was guaranteed during the entire installation process. These details supported also the low investment cost approach. To support the latest security requirements the RTU solution from ABB enabled the user to switch off the unused ports to prevent unauthorized access to the system.