Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative

Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative (SSVEC) serves about 45,000 customers over 6500 sq. miles of SE Arizona, USA. 

This is a very diverse residential, commercial, industrial/military, agricultural, and tourism area they must manage to suit both the progressive urbanites and the retired rural residents.

Their SCADA system provides the monitoring and control necessary for the diverse needs of the staff and customers. The primary purposes have been demand control and system data collection, but SSVEC is moving into additional system control functions, causing them to select the features of iPower to add to their Proficy iFIX system.

"As SSVEC moved more into full system control functions, Catapult iPower offered the full range of desired features utilities required for safe and efficient operations and record keeping."
Gerald Barney & Philip Asbury, SCADA Engineers - Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative

Gerald Barney & Philip Asbury, the engineers responsible for SSVEC's SCADA system, discuss the reasons they chose Catapult iPower...

"SSVEC upgraded to the GE Fanuc iFIX SCADA system in 1999. The capabilities and flexibilities of this software are well known and widely accepted. However, iFIX is so flexible that more electric power-focused software offers many advantages to electric utilities with smaller automation staffs.

As SSVEC moved more into full system control functions, iPower offered the full range of desired control and information tagging features utilities required for safe and efficient operations and record keeping. Catapult Software also offered real expertise with iFIX and provides an additional source of related utility automation and GE Fanuc experience to draw upon.

The additional features of the iPower List Manager provided extra data management to enhance the value of SSVEC's SCADA system, making rapid tracking of computer and electric system events very much easier than our original iFIX implementation."

Network
SSVEC's iPower system uses five nodes. Three in the main control room and two are at remote operations offices, limited normally to view-only system monitoring. Engineers access the terminal server node through their desktop computers to obtain data for operations and design planning.

SSVEC serves a rapidly growing load, 130 MW at present, requiring 21 substations and an industrial/ agricultural peak shaving generator site. Existing PLCs are MODICON E984 units using modbus protocols. New pending installations will use Orion PLCs with the same protocol for continued compatibility.

SSVEC are currently using a radio communications system with two repeaters to cover their entire network, and they have plans to move to a fiber-optic network where applicable.

Feedback
Gerald Barney & Philip Asbury, the engineers responsible for SSVEC's SCADA system, discuss the Catapult iPower integration project...

"The original GE Fanuc iFIX software features are not limited, but the resources for programming and implementation available to SSVEC have been limited. Catapult's approach to upgrading SSVEC's system to iPower greatly advanced our SCADA system capabilities.

"Catapult's approach to upgrading SSVEC's system to Catapult iPower greatly advanced our SCADA system capabilities."
Gerald Barney & Philip Asbury, SCADA Engineers - Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative

Using our existing picture files, the implementation was very much improved through proper error trapping techniques. Security was significantly improved by adding confirmation routines to important control functions. Specific additional power utility functions were greatly needed and readily available through iPower.

We feel that we now have the full functionality required to advance to full utility control operations, both in secure control operations and in efficient event/log data handling."

Customer Summary