ADVANTAGES OF USING PLC IN A SCADA SYSTEM

i) State any three advantages of using PLC in a SCADA system

The advantages of the PLC / DCS SCADA system are:

 Cost-effectiveve for controlling complex systems.

 Flexible and can be reapplied to control other systems quickly and easily.

 Computational abilities allow more sophisticated control.

ii) Describe the following communication systems used in a SCADA system.

i) Ethernet

Ethernet works on the principle of media access controlled by a collision detection

mechanism. Each station is identified by a unique key, or MAC address, to ensure that every

computer on an Ethernet network has a different address. This technology known as Carrier

Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) ensures that only one station

can transmit a message on the medium at a time. Successive Ethernet upgrades have given

rise to the IEEE 802.3 standard which only defines the characteristics of the physical layers;

the way the data accesses the network and the data frame must be defined by further layers.