Minnkota Electric Cooperative (Grand Forks, North Dakota, U.S.) has extended its energy management system (EMS) using SCADA-Xchange from Telemetric Corp. (Boise, Idaho, U.S.). Now, Minnkota seamlessly monitors, controls and receives alarms from remote substations through its EMS.

In the fall of 2000, Minnkota installed SCADA-operated switches at a substation near Ray, Minnesota, U.S. After researching various options for communication, including traditional phone lines, a microwave path and various cellular solutions, it determined that Telemetric's MicroRTUs would be the most cost-effective method. The following year, Minnkota deployed additional MicroRTUs for communicating with several mobile substations.

Originally, these devices were all maintained on the Telemetric Intelligent Web Server, which provides complete monitoring and control of the devices, as well as alarm notifications via e-mail and pager. Minnkota researched the possibility of programming a solution that would link the devices to its EMS, but decided it would be too costly and time consuming. Then Telemetric introduced Minnkota to SCADA-Xchange.

Now data is transferred from the Telemetric MicroRTU in the field over a cellular connection to the secure Network Operations Center. The data is then translated to DNP3 and stored to the Telemetric Xchange server, protected by a firewall.
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