Industrial Engineer · phase 7 of 16
RTU
Remote Terminal Unit designed to collect field data and control remote assets over telemetry networks.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- An RTU is a remote terminal unit, a rugged controller made to sit alone at a distant site, gather data, and report over a slow or unreliable link. It is built to survive heat, cold and bad power with nobody around.
- Example
- A well site RTU reads pressure and flow, logs them locally, and sends them to SCADA over a radio when the link is up. If the link drops, it keeps logging and controls the well on its own.
- Why it matters
- RTUs are chosen where a PLC would need a heated cabinet and a full time network. Their protocols, like DNP3, are built for store and forward over bad links, which a normal PLC protocol assumes never happens.
- Hook
- The controller that expects to be left alone.
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 7: PLC Related Automation Systems
The neighbours a PLC lives beside on a plant floor, from operator panels and SCADA up to the motion and batch systems it hands work to.
