Visionary Electronics, Inc.

The RTU is a general purpose device that can be adapted to a wide variety of applications where it is used for monitoring and control.  We strive to offer products that have maximum flexibility and adaptability, and, at the same time, take minimum effort to install, configure, and maintain.

The use of RTU's provides a consistent interface to a variety of equipment from a number of manufacturers.  This simplifies the training requirements of staff to install and operate equipment in today's complex electric utility environment.

Some of the general purpose devices our RTU's are being used with include relays, reclosers, capacitor banks, motor operated switches, distribution transformers, and voltage & current sensors.

In addition to the general purpose applications mentioned above, we have developed a number of special applications for our customers that give a wider variety of applications where they can be used.  This has included reading sensors, meters, and even a weather station and reconfiguring the data so it can be sent back to a SCADA hub in its native protocol.

In another application, we programmed RTUs to scan remote reclosers at programmable intervals looking for event files.  When an event file is found, the RTU downloads it into its own buffer, encases it in a DNP wrapper and transfers it to the SCADA hub when it receives the appropriate read command.  Once it is received at the hub the original event file is reconstructed from the DNP response.  The event file is then transferred over a secure, encrypted link to the corporate LAN, where it is available for the engineering staff to analyze.

In yet another project we programmed our RTUs to be used in a demand response application where the utility uses the radio and satellite links of their SCADA systems to directly communicate with customers' energy management systems to shed load during peak loading emergencies.  This entailed developing a computer program that allows the utility to schedule load shedding events.  

We designed a server that resides at the SCADA hub.  The server receives commands from the program over the corporate LAN and translates them into SCADA commands that are then sent over radios and satellite links to the customers.

At the customers' sites the SCADA commands are further translated into XML commands to tell the EMS's to shed load.  The EMS's have been pre-programmed by the customer to shed load in a particular way depending on the severity of the command received.