New Primary Control Center will help ensure reliable natural gas service to customers throughout the fast-growing San Antonio, Texas area
FOXBORO, MASSACHUSETTS – April 12, 2004 – City Public Service (CPS), the nation’s largest municipally owned energy company providing both natural gas and electric service, has selected Invensys to implement an advanced Foxboro gas distribution SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system in a new state-of-the-art Primary Control Center (PCC) now under construction in San Antonio, Texas.
“From an operational standpoint, cutting-edge technical systems [such as the Foxboro SCADA system] will enable the CPS Primary Control Center to achieve a remarkable 99.99 percent operational availability, allowing CPS to better monitor its service area with more precision and to automatically correct system interruptions,” said Milton Lee, CPS general manager and CEO, at the March 2003 groundbreaking ceremony for the new, 72,200-square-foot Primary Control Center, which will serve as the high-tech “nerve center” for the municipality.
The new Foxboro gas distribution SCADA system will replace an aging system with the latest open system architecture that facilitates easy integration of third-party applications, devices, and toolsets.To achieve City Public Service’s 99.99 percent availability target, the new Foxboro SCADA system will utilize a robust, Unix-based dual-redundant Master Station in the Primary Control Center, plus an offsite emergency backup system.The system will provide a comprehensive SCADA toolset plus Foxboro’s advanced SCADA applications for gas scheduling, real-time and historical Gas Flow tracking, gas accounting, line pack analysis, AGA calculations, closed-loop flow and pressure control, and over/under pressure analysis.
Support for the ICCP (Inter Control Center Protocol) will facilitate data exchange with other ICCP-enabled control systems. The Foxboro SCADA Master Station will support communications with EFM (electronic flow measurement) devices as well as a large number of legacy RTUs (remote terminal units) located throughout the 4,420 miles of gas pipelines in the network. In addition to the primary and backup SCADA systems, Invensys is also providing a dedicated development system. “We’re very excited about the new Foxboro gas distribution SCADA system,” said Bill Woosley, Gas Control Manager at CPS.
“In addition to providing the high level of availability we require to help ensure superior customer service, the new system will provide our operators with much better and more timely information than was previously available.” For more information on Foxboro SCADA solutions, readers should call the Invensys Customer Satisfaction Center toll-free at 866-746-6477 (508-549-2424 outside the US and Canada), or visit Foxboro on the Web at www.foxboro.com .
About Invensys
Invensys is a global leader in production technology. The group helps customers improve productivity, performance and profitability using innovative services and technologies and a deep understanding of their industries and applications.Invensys works closely with customers to increase performance of production assets, maximize return on investment in production and data management technologies and remove cost and cash from the supply chain. The company includes APV, Avantis, Eurotherm, Foxboro, IMServ, SimSci-Esscor, Triconex and Wonderware, and other well-known brands.
These businesses address process and batch industries -- including oil and gas, chemicals, power and utilities, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and personal health care products, metals and mining -- plus the discrete and hybrid manufacturing sectors.Invensys operates in more than 60 countries, with its headquarters in London. For more information, visit www.invensys.com .
