Transco Real Time Engine

Gas pipeline operator Transco, part of the Lattice Group, have placed a contract valued at £1,005k with CSE-Servelec Limited of Sheffield UK.

Transco is responsible for the UK's natural gas transmission network and manages pipelines that deliver gas for its customers via the transmission network. Gas pressures and flows are collected via a telemetry system from 2,000 outstation sites that are monitored and controlled in five control centres.

The contract is for the design, development, installation and commissioning of a Real Time Engine, including communications interfaces, to handle data acquisition, data historian and control interfaces to the 2,000 remote sites equipped with telemetry outstations.

A major requirement of the specification is high availability for the Real Time Engine and its associated data archive.

CSE Servelec will use SCOPE-X, their well established Telemetry and SCADA suite of software, with live data connections to an Oracle relational database.

SCOPE-X is widely used in the Utility Industries and in other wide area data acquisition applications such as monitoring and controlling the BBC's UK-wide Television and Radio Transmission Network.

The system will be one component of the Ulysses Project within Transco. Ulysses will provide Operations and Management staff with high visibility of the UK-wide gas transmission network to assist in the efficient control of the network.

The communications and data gathering system will also interface with third party systems for data processing, display facilities and other Ulysses components.

Phase one of the project covers the development and production of a 'Proof of Concept' to confirm that the proposed design meets the specified performance criteria.

A joint project team will handle all phases of the implementation to deliver a system that meets the requirements for specified functionality, high availability, performance criteria and system loading.