A Serial/IP solution for using a TCP/IP network to communicate with equipment at remote substations

Substation management software uses serial communications to connect to equipment at substations. For greater span of control and consolidated management of a power system, utilities wish to run management software at a central location, using a private network to communicate with field equipment.

The Problem

The substation management application uses serial ports, and now needs to communicate with substations over a TCP/IP network.

The Serial/IP Solution

The Serial/IP COM Port Redirector allows the substation management application to continue to use the COM port interface, providing "virtual" COM ports that transparently access equipment located on TCP/IP networks.

The Serial/IP Redirector is installed on each computer running the substation management application. The redirector is configured to provide a number of virtual COM ports that is the maximum number of simultaneous connections to substation equipment that the application needs.

The management application is not modified, but simply reconfigured to use Serial/IP virtual COM ports instead of local COM ports. Each virtual COM port is configured to an IP address of a serial server and a TCP port number corresponding to a specific device connected to that server.

Each time the management application opens a virtual COM port, the Serial/IP Redirector immediately establishes a connection to the serial server and begins relaying COM port data between the management application and the equipment connected to the serial server.

Advantages of the Serial/IP Solution

• Substation management software can be left unchanged, using virtual COM ports to connect to upgraded substations.
• The Serial/IP Redirector provides the protocols and compatibility features that are field-proven to work with serial servers and IP-enabled controllers from numerous manufacturers.
• The Serial/IP Redirector is scalable to thousands of virtual COM ports for large applications.
• Diagnostic features in the Serial/IP Redirector provide valuable data for troubleshooting problems.