Cogent DataHub Use Case
In a multibillion-dollar upgrade to a large North American city's water supply system, the Cogent DataHub was chosen to provide secure connectivity between the SCADA systems of each remote pumping station and the utility's central offices.
In the first phase of the project, a DataHub was installed at each remote location and connected via OPC DA to that station's SCADA system. Each of these DataHubs was then connected in turn to the central office. The data flow from the stations to the central office was configured to be outbound only, which prevents any data from being sent to remote pump stations.
With data from all the pumping stations arriving in a central DataHub, they were able to use it in a variety of ways. Selected data from each station was recorded in a database, using the DataHub's Database function. An additional DataHub was installed in the IT department to mirror and bridge data to other OPC servers in operation.
In the next phase of the project, the utility company set up new tunnel connections between each of the remote pumping stations to allow them to share data with each other. In this way each station was informed of the general condition of the entire system, and if one station saw performance degrade, the other stations became aware of it in real time, and could quickly adjust their production as needed.
The final phase of the project was to implement redundancy. Some of the remote sites had two redundant SCADA systems. By setting up a separate connection for each system to the central DataHub, system engineers were able to use the DataHub's redundancy feature to switch connections whenever the active one went down.