Station Monitoring

Station Monitoring provides a RealTime database (RTDB) table to store station configuration. This allows one or more remotes (Remote Terminal Units (RTUs), Programmable Logic Controller (PLCs), flow computers) to be associated with the stations along the pipeline (measurement, pumping or compressor, storage, valve, telemetry, for example) to which they belong.

Station Monitoring performs alarm "rollups" in a three-level hierarchy that starts with stations and progresses upwards to sites, and, finally, regions. Administrators associate analog, rate, status, multistate, rtstring, and flowTotalConfig points with particular station records. Alarms generated against custom tables will automatically rollup if the associated station is a key field within the custom table. Station records are then grouped under particular sites, and sites grouped under particular regions. Station Monitoring functionality consists of the following:

• Keeping track of the highest severity alarm conditions at stations, sites, and regions.

• Maintaining a count of alarms of each severity level at stations, sites, and regions.

When an alarm occurs, Controllers can quickly drill down from region to site, from site to station, and, finally, to the station's point that caused the alarm.

Creating a New Station Configuration

From a telemetry standpoint, a station is a collection of remotes (RTUs, PLCs, flow computers, for example) at a single location such as a measurement station, or a pump or compressor station. An Administrator creates the remote and telemetry records according to standard default procedures. Next, they create a station record and associate it with the remotes and telemetry points by entering the station name into the Station field of each record. Once this is done, the system automatically maintains alarm rollup information for the alarms at the station. Alarm rollup information for sites and regions is achieved by associating stations with sites, and sites with regions.