The collection, treatment and distribution system for a metropolitan water and wastewater treatment and monitoring system typically covers hundreds or thousands of square kilometres. Water levels may need to be monitored on distant reservoirs and lakes, chemical treatments and flow rates controlled in multiple tanks and lagoons, pumps operated at lift stations and regulatory reports generated for local and national authorities
"More than 100 water and wastewater authorities, in North America alone, have standardised on CitectSCADA," says Wilhelm Swart of Citect's Africa office. "A CitectSCADA system can be scaled to fit any size water treatment facility or combination of utilities.
He elaborates further: "Our scada's open architecture allows it to operate over large networks with different communications types: autodiallers, wireless networking, Ethernet, spread radios and other scada-based water systems."
Citect also claims that its scada offering includes the largest number of native drivers to connect with disparate hardware platforms.
Reference water/waste-water sites for Citect
Client: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality
Location: Port Elizabeth
Type: Water and wastewater
The Nelson Mandela Municipality is the largest telemetry sewerage project in the Eastern Cape region. The plant controls the water and sewage utilities for Port Elizabeth and the surrounding areas. The municipality needed to upgrade its sewage control facilities and required a robust scada system that could easily manage large amounts of data.
Challenge: To upgrade the scada system and remote terminal units controlling the sewage treatment works including 70 pump stations.
Solution: Citect certified Partner; SSE Data Networks implemented and commissioned a scada system and telemetry for the sewage utilities at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality.
Benefits: Implementing CitectSCADA allowed easier monitoring and control of facilities. CitectSCADA's unique Process Analyst combines alarms and trends on a single integrated display allowing operators to determine the cause of disturbances much faster. The open architecture and flexibility also facilitated smooth upgrades and expansions.
Client: Grabouw Municipality
Location: Grabouw, Western Cape
Type: Water management telemetry and scada system
The Grabouw Municipality, situated in Sir Lowery's Pass, forms part of the Theewaterkloof Municipality (formerly Caledon). The existing system consisted of different types of telemetry products reporting reservoir levels and pump status back to a mimic panel in the control room. It was decided to automate the manually operated system by implementing a scada system at the water treatment works. Expansions to the network also required the installation of a new telemetry system.
Challenge: To replace Grabouw's Water Treatment Works existing system with a new control system that included remote control functions. The challenge was to achieve a more intuitive operator interface, simplified configuration and easier maintenance as well as improving connectivity and quality of data.
Solution: CitectSCADA software was implemented for control and visualisation at the Water Treatment Works. An SSE Telemetry System, with its powerful PLC programmability functions, was installed to monitor and automate the remote pump and reservoir stations.
Benefits: By integrating reliable scada and telemetry systems, SSE has enabled Grabouw's Water Treatment Works to reduce costs through minimising the level of manual operations in the control room. The solution has already increased the functionality of the existing system and can easily grow to meet the company's future requirements.
Client: City of Clearwater
Location: Clearwater, Florida, USA
Type: Water and wastewater
The City of Clearwater provides water treatment and safe drinking water to over 100 000 residents. Clearwater is located on the Gulf of Mexico in a coastal area where water supplies are limited, shallow and vulnerable to contamination and saltwater intrusion. Therefore, the city requires a very reliable scada system.
Challenge: Collect data from three water treatment facilities, three wastewater treatment and distribution facilities, the laboratory information management system (LIMS), and the maintenance management system to generate daily reports.
Solution: A CitectSCADA system was installed at the three water facilities and at the three wastewater treatment facilities to monitor and control the plants and remote terminal units (RTUs). Using CitectSCADA Reports, data is then linked to the maintenance management system and the LIMS to generate daily reports.
Benefits: US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other regulatory reports that used to take hours or days to complete can now be accomplished with a simple mouse click. CitectSCADA Reports permits authorised users to monitor the plants and RTUs from any EPA and other regulatory screen, including a web portal. Each night the times of all plant equipment is sent to an Oracle-based application to generate work orders.
Client: City of Shreveport
Location: Shreveport, Louisiana, USA
Type: Water and wastewater
The City of Shreveport had facilities that are national historical and engineering landmarks. It needed to upgrade its scada used to monitor and control the collection, treatment and distribution of water and wastewater. The city was using multiple plant and RTU controllers, many of which were nonfunctional or obsolete. In addition, the existing RTUs were supplied by a defunct company, which made obtaining upgrades and support impossible.
Challenge: To connect disparate systems that contained multiple hardware platforms and obsolete RTUs. Each plant was isolated with no ability to exchange data between them. The various communication protocols and hardware configurations created intermittent connectivity problems and system lockups within the plants. Long communication delays and slow network response made it difficult for operators to detect equipment failures.
Solution: CitectSCADA easily remedied many of the communication problems through its large numbers of native drivers. In addition, Citect's open architecture will protect the city's investment well into the future.
Benefits: Training costs and learning curves have been greatly reduced because users have the same look and feel wherever they log into the system. Moreover, users can now monitor multiple sites immediately from any site in the system. The new web-based reporting system facilitates regulatory reporting by allowing reports to be viewed in a web browser independent of the scada systems.
Client: Metropolitan Utilities District, Omaha
Location: Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Type: Water and natural gas
The Metropolitan Utilities District (MUD) provides water and natural to greater Omaha. MUD provides safe drinking water to 164 000 customers via 2207 miles of mains. The district buys natural gas in volume from a portfolio of providers in the US and Canada to keep rates low. Gas is transported via a pipeline to town border stations then distributed through 2159 miles of mains to 172 500 customers.
Challenge: To upgrade the system used to monitor and control the distribution of both water and natural gas. They needed to improve efficiencies and contain maintenance costs.
Solution: Departmental managers must be able to view operations from their own offices in realtime to plant for the production of water and purchase of natural gas in response to weather conditions. Failure to purchase in advance the correct amount of natural gas can force the district to pay more than necessary for same-day purchases and incur penalties from the pipelines. Using CitectSCADA, users can gather the information they need in realtime and check operational status while seated at their desks.
Benefits: In addition to getting the necessary information to make natural gas purchases and distribute water and gas in a timely fashion, MUD has also been able to make minor modifications to the system without requiring an outside firm and no existing hardware had to be modified or replaced.
For more information contact Niconette du Toit, Citect, +27 (0)11 699 6600, [email protected], www.citect.com
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