A low cost and reliable approach in upgrading remote monitoring networks

There is an increasing usage of high-bandwidth network for data transfer in power system. Existing monitoring systems employing RS232 interface are required to adapt to the new communication platform which is based on TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). In this paper, low-cost gateways were proposed for this issue. To avoid significant changes on the monitoring systems because that would jeopardise their normal operation, the proposed gateways must handle two crucial jobs, namely data conversion between RS232 and TCP/IP and application-specific tasks. The approach is able to guarantee reliable operation on TCP/IP networks and keep the upgrading effort as low as possible. The prototype of the gateways was built and was applied successfully in one critical monitoring system. It can be concluded that the proposed method is suitable for upgrading existing monitoring systems for power companies.