MODCOMP Awarded Contract by Virginia Power -- Utility Plant Upgrade to Open-Systems -- Meets Company Needs for Next Fifteen Years

March 5, 1997, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida - Virginia Power has awarded MODCOMP a $967,000 contract to upgrade and retrofit the Plant Control and Monitoring System (PCAMS) SCADA computer system at its Bath County Pumped Storage Station, located in Bath County, Virginia. The Bath County Pumped Storage Station, which went into commercial operation in December, 1985 with MODCOMP CLASSIC® superminicomputers and MODACS I/O equipment, has six turbine generators with a capacity of 2,100 megawatts. Sixty percent of the capacity is owned by Virginia Power and forty percent of the capacity is owned by Allegheny Power System. The Virginia Power owned capacity contributes to their servicing more than 4.5 million people in their thirty thousand square mile service territory.

The new plant computer system will provide a distributed computing environment using client/server technologies. Intel® Pentium® CPU's -- running MODCOMP's REAL/IX PX(TM) real-time UNIX®-based operating system will replace the MODCOMP CLASSIC super-minicomputers. Each front-end processor (FEP) will retain its existing MODACS(TM) I/O front-end equipment but will be fitted to MODCOMP's VME-based MODACS/X(TM) controller. The plant computer system uses eight FEP's configured to process data for nearly 5500 MODACS I/O points. The FEP's also collect data from the power tunnel flow meters for each of the six turbine generators. Critical to the control of the facility is the one millisecond time-stamping resolution provided by the MODACS Sequence-Of-Event process I/O hardware. Three 200MHz Pentium Pro® servers will spread the load and minimize the risk from a server casualty. A 10Base-FL/FOIRL and 10BaseT fault tolerant LAN will connect the application servers to the FEP's, engineering workstations, and operators consoles, for high reliability and availability. Ethernet(TM) switches will provide fault tolerance within the process LAN. A router will connect the plant LAN to the process LAN, but will restrict access to the servers from the plant LAN.

The SCADA application software, based on AccessPoint(TM), will be used throughout the FEP's and application servers. Server functionality will be segmented to maintain the real-time database (RTDB), historical database (HDB), and communications between the plant and process LAN's. Each FEP will process its incoming data and store the processed information in its local database. AccessPoint Host PeerPath software will ensure that the change of data information is forwarded to the RTDB maintained on the database server.

This new system should meet Virginia Power's needs for the next fifteen years. Its open-systems architecture lends itself to future upgrades with higher performance processors. It is extendible, so that additional FEP's and servers can be readily added.

Company Background
Founded in 1970, MODCOMP has supplied high performance, real-time computer systems, products and services for mission-critical applications -- such as government/aerospace, communications and industrial automation -- to customers worldwide. MODCOMP systems operate in exceptionally critical and demanding applications, where reliability and real-time performance are essential. A broad range of leading industrial and government organizations have chosen MODCOMP for their real-time applications. MODCOMP applications range from tracking and receiving data from deep space probes, to supervisory control of electrical distribution networks for Virginia Power and other power companies.

MODCOMP develops leading-edge hardware, software and application products to provide the best real-time interactive solutions for its customers. MODCOMP delivers state-of-the-art technology and comprehensive, flexible and around-the-clock support services. MODCOMP's worldwide field service organization provides total support for installation and commissioning, remedial maintenance, training, project management and extensive application support services. Visit our web site at http://www.modcomp.com.

Corporate Headquarters: MODCOMP, Inc., 1650 West McNab Road, P.O. Box 6099, Ft Lauderdale, FL 33309-1088, USA, Tel: +1 954 974 1380, Fax: +1 954 977 1900, E-mail: info@modcomp.com, Internet: http://www.modcomp.com

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Note to Editors: MODCOMP and CLASSIC, are registered trademarks of MODCOMP, Inc. MODACS, MODACS/X, and REAL/IX PX are trademarks of MODCOMP, Inc. REAL/IX is a registered trademark of Modular Computer Systems, Inc. Intel, Pentium and Pentium Pro are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. AccessPoint is a trademark of AccessWare, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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For more information regarding this press release contact: Ellen Rowley, PH: 954-977-1655, E-mail: rowleye@modcomp.com