Vector Energy Projects 
Vector Energy is New Zealand's largest Electricity and Gas distribution company.
Location : New Zealand
Dates : 1998 to 2001
Auckland CBD Electricity Distribution (formerly United Networks / Mercury)
During 1998, the Auckland CBD suffered a 5-week electricity blackout, caused by a series of failures of 110kV underground cables, see here for details. Alternative power cables were quickly installed and modifications made to three 110/22kV sub-stations at Penrose, Liverpool and Hobson under the CBD Power Reinforcement project. Dave led a team to install a new SCADA system for these three sub-stations that included a temporary iSCADA Master Station in the control room.
Natural Gas Distribution Network (formerly Natural Gas Corporation (NGC) )
The SCADA network that controls and monitors the Gas pipelines across New Zealand's North Island was extensively refurbished between 1999 and 2001.
The original system consisted of a Leeds & Northrup LN2068 SCADA master station and a network of over a hundred C225 RTUs, communicating by Conitel over an X.25 network. This system was replaced by a new system of a Unix based iSCADA Master Station and RTU50 and SCD5200 RTUs communicating by DNP3 over a TCP/IP network.
Due to the impossibility of changing all of the RTUs at once, the old system was progressively cut-over to the new system one RTU at a time. This involved:-
- Engineering a custom real-time data feed from the old LN2068 system to the new iSCADA system, and also handling controls in the reverse direction
- Porting database and graphics.
- Writing custom RTU based facilities, including a communications protocol for the IMS flow computers and special calculations for the energy billing process.