The development of an intelligent and integrated gateway system for the automation systems in power utilities

In recent years, it has been a worldwide trend that many power utilities gave their attention to develop and operate their power plants, substation and distribution systems. Following this trend, KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation) has developed many electric automation systems with various communication networks. It has been natural that the automation systems are just focused on to remote devices when they come to be designed. But, we have to shift the focus to the automation system itself. There are many problems in maintenance and integration of the automation systems. When an automation system can't control some remote devices, there is no way to get why and which part (Master, Network, Master-side Modem or Remote-side modern, Remote Device, etc.) of the system has problems. Moreover, the system just directly links to another automation system. If the system has to link many systems, it needs the linker per each systems. So, we need a new concept to resolve that problems, and develop the Intelligent and Integrated Gateway (IIG) for the automation systems for easy maintenance and Integration.