How Bokaro Steel Plant modernized its supervisory load control center using ETAP SCADA

This customer needed a modern, digital solution for real-time visibility, reporting, and monitoring tools for their large scale manufacturing plant. We worked with them closely to design and deploy a complete eSCADA solution to meet their specific requirements.

Sushil Ojha, Assistant General Manager of Engineering and Project Execution, ETAP

With an outdated Supervisory Load Control Center (SLCC) system, this steel manufacturing company needed to improve visibility and response times for their power systems across the entire plant. They worked with ETAP to implement upgrades to their realtime operations that would improve operational reliability, situational awareness, and data-driven decision-making.

Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is a public sector steel manufacturing corporation based in New Delhi. The largest government-owned steel producer in India, SAIL operates and owns five integrated steel plants. It also has an R&D Centre for Iron & Steel and a Centre for Engineering. Bokaro Steel has provided a strong raw material base for various modern engineering industries, including automobile, pipe and tube, LPG cylinder, barrel, and drum producing industries.

Location: Bokaro, Jharkhand, India

Year: 2022

Upgrade the existing supervisory load control system

Challenges

Legacy reporting was entirely manual, time-consuming, and prone to errors
The communication network was non-digital and non-redundant, limiting system reliability
Alarms and events were not centralized, making troubleshooting inefficient
The plant lacked effective maximum-demand monitoring, a critical issue for steel producers
The SLCC did not provide unified visibility over its substations and service stations
Incident analysis and root-cause identification were difficult due to missing records and no procedural methods
The electrical system model was outdated - the existing load-flow study was more than 20 years old

What we delivered

ETAP eSCADA™ - Real-Time Electrical SCADA - Intuitive, intelligent, and integrated real-time monitoring via a state-of-the-art interface

Integration of 27,000+ data tags into the central SLCC
Engineering of 400+ HMI pages for operators covering one-line diagrams, feeders, alarms, system health, and analytics
Implementation of trending, dashboards, advanced alarming, maximum-demand logic, and automated reporting

ETAP Digital Twin and iSLD - Intelligent power system monitoring to create, configure, customize, and manage electrical system models

Rebuilding the plant's electrical network model, replacing decades-old documentation
Enabling load-flow analysis, N-1/N-2 contingency evaluations, event playback, and what-if simulations
Creating a modern digital twin for ongoing planning and operations

Field hardware & networking upgrades

Deployment of MFMs, MFTs, RTUs, transducers, and switches
Construction of a redundant fiber-optic backbone interconnecting all 44 substations

OPC integration

Implementation of an OPC link to the other SLCC in Kolkata for real-time exchange of grid and system data

ETAP started this study by building a complete and up to date digital twin of the electrical model, and them moved into HMI design for their SCADA/PDMS network. Hardware was updated in the field and in the Control Center (IT hardware, metering rack supply, substation transducer, RTUs, etc.), including a fiber optic cable for data transfer between OPC Data Access and the SLCC system. ETAP worked with the customer to build customized HMI views and reporting tailored to their specific requirements. After testing and implementation, ETAP trained the Operators to ensure fast adoption.

Outcomes

Real-time visibility and centralized control over plant operations

Maximize equipment uptime
Optimize energy usage
Quickly resolve power or equipment faults before they disrupt production
Produce accurate reporting to stay compliant

The unified eSCADA system and upgraded infrastructure at Bokaro Steel now provides centralized alarm management, complete event tracking and electrical measurements for all 44 substations, with:

Accurate demand monitoring: Plant-specific logic helps operators track and manage demand, reducing penalties and improving planning.

Load-flow and contingency analysis (N-1, N-2): Operators can simulate upcoming maintenance scenarios and outages and verify the system’s stability before execution.

Easily discoverable state and load estimation from metering data in the field.

Event playback & root-cause analysis: Historical events can be replayed to understand sequences leading to faults or abnormal conditions.

Up-to-date and interactive power system model: Operators now use an intelligent single line diagram and tabular views of their power system for real-time measurements and system status.

Energy reporting automation: Customized energy, demand, event, and operational reports are generated automatically and can be emailed or scheduled.

Reliable, redundant communication architecture: The new fiber-optic network provides high availability and robust connectivity across all substations.

Improved competency: ETAP provided eSCADA Operator training to increase the autonomy and confidence of SLCC personnel.

What do they think about ETAP?

Customer perspectives

One of our major issues with with report generation. Since using ETAP, the reports and analysis have become much faster, and the government’s maximum-demand requirements are met more efficiently.
- The SAIL SLCC Operations Team, Bokaro Steel Plant

ETAP SCADA helped us modernize the infrastructure and integrate all substations into a centralized control system with higher visibility and reliability.
- The Engineering Team, Bokaro Steel Plant