1. The Problem

A utility company needed more than just monitoring, they required a gateway solution to read from 125,000 PLC points and write to 125,000 eletrical points across 5 remote substations. Their legacy system couldn't handle protocol translation at scale, lacked real-time visibility, had no redundancy, and required full downtime for any system changes—risking critical grid operations during maintenance.

2. The Solution

2.1 Overview

  • Edge: FrameworX EdgeConnect.

  • Central: FrameworX Enterprise with UI.

  • DataHub: TagProvider for distributed engineering and close to zero downtime Edge additions.

  • Protocols: DNP3 (master/slave), Modbus.

  • Scale: 5 Edges × 25k tags = 125k tags publishing; overall 250k points (125k Modbus reads + 125k DNP3 writes).

  • Modules: Alarms and Historian (Postgres + TimescaleDB).

  • Sizing: 48 vCPU and 128 GB RAM (including redundancy).

  • Redundancy: One pair of full-project redundancy; store-and-forward enabled.

2.2 Logical Diagram (high level)

[ DataHub (TapProvider)/UI ] reads historical + alarms reads live device values [ Postgres + TimescaleDB ] Historian + Alarms [ Edge Sites ×5 ] • FrameworX EdgeConnect • Collects Modbus (read) • Publishes to DNP3 (write) • Exposes device values (read) • Sends timeseries/alarms ? Historian


Expanded flow:

  • 5 EdgeConnect collecting data with Modbus and creating datasets + alarms
    → Postgres + TimescaleDB (Historian + Alarms)
    → FrameworX Enterprise showing data in the UI (UI Server).

2.3 Architecture Summary

  • Edges: 5 units; 25k tags each.

  • Central Services: Historian + Alarms; UI served by FrameworX Enterprise.

  • Point Directionality: 125k reads (Modbus) + 125k writes (DNP3) = 250k.

  • Operations: Distributed engineering via TagProvider; hot-add new Edge without downtime.

2.4 Redundancy & Store-and-Forward

  • Redundancy: 1 pair of full project redundancy.

  • Continuity: Store-and-forward for resilient ingestion.

3. Key Enablers

  • DataHub “TapProvider” enabling distributed engineering.

  • Redundancy (full-project pair) with store-and-forward.

  • Electrical protocols such as DNP3 (plus Modbus).

4. The Results

The FrameworX solution delivered:

  • Full Gateway Capability: Data flow handling 250,000 points (125k Modbus reads → 125k DNP3 writes)

  • Real-time Protocol Translation: Seamless Modbus-to-DNP3 conversion across all 5 sites

  • Zero Downtime: Hot-add new sites without system interruption via DataHub TagProvider

  • 99.99% Uptime: Full redundancy with store-and-forward eliminated data loss

  • 85% Faster Deployment: New edge sites added in hours instead of days

  • 40% Cost Reduction: Optimized infrastructure (48 vCPU, 128GB RAM) supporting entire redundant system


In this section...