Bloem Water's reticulation system covers a vast tract of land supplying bulk and potable water to the area - predominantly for domestic use. Historically, the Department of Water Affairs utilised numerous operators to monitor the components of this extensive infrastructure but as new plants and sites were added, Bloem Water decided to automate its systems on an Adroit supervisory control and data (scada) system to provide better monitoring and to cut down on spending.
The Adroit system has been in regional operation at Bloem Water since 1996, but it was not until recently that the organisation decided to centralise much of its functionality to improve efficiency and decrease its reliance and spending on human capital.
Remote areas are managed from three different locations spread throughout the central and southern Free State. From the central office, Bloem Water maintains and monitors the mentioned sites that supply water to the greater Bloemfontein area and other municipalities in the southern Free State. These sites are situated at Rustfontein Dam, 60 km east of Bloemfontein, Welbedacht Dam, approximately 130 km south of Bloemfontein and Bethulie in the southern Free State.
The Adroit scada monitors reservoir and dam levels and performs pump control remotely. Items that are monitored includes, amongst others, valve conditions and winding temperatures. The Rustfontein treatment plant is semi-automated. Both the central and Rustfontein offices can monitor water quality and operate the various processes on the plant using the scada.
Each plant uses Ethernet for local data whilst remote data is transmitted using radio telemetry and the Spectrum driver protocol. To improve the efficiency of the radio system and the security of data, information is transferred to a combined regional file server and then daily onto the Bloem Water server. From here remote users can access the information that is stored in an integrated centralised database.
Data on the server is backed-up on a daily basis both centrally and locally and WGP files are backed-up locally as soon as changes are made so that it can be replaced immediately if necessary.
Bloem Water has implemented a strategy of continuous improvement and innovation. And, as such, has upgraded to Adroit version 6.0, where it now automatically captures information in an SQL database. The organisation does not generate regular, automated reports from the scada, but instead will use the intranet to query the SQL database as required.
The product was originally recommended to the organisation by a team of consultants, and Bloem Water has stayed with the system because it is a South African product.
"Adroit is user friendly and has all the required functionality. It is a total package and the new versions just keep improving!" says Barry de Klerk, maintenance manager for Bloem Water.
The organisation relies on the Adroit trending function in areas where flow rates and levels are critical to the entire reticulation system. Operating on Microsoft Windows XP, the organisation has numerous workstations at its sites that are controlled by the scada. In addition it has four machines that are Adroit licensed and three HASPs were upgraded to include a remote Adroit interface.
Bloem Water use programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to execute the logic at all outstations except the small ones where the organisation is considering monitoring these sites remotely using PLCs or alternatively implementing SSE telemetry equipment for this purpose.
Future plans also include the installation of a fourth machine in Bloemfontein that will replace any machine that fails in the field; upgrading mimics to ensure user friendliness; the implementation of Maximo - a computerised maintenance management system that will run in parallel with Adroit and draw maintenance data from the scada; and the use of sirens in conjunction with the onscreen alarming function to alert operators to pump trips, power failure conditions, and reservoir levels while they are performing manual tasks, such as sampling, in the field.
| Tel: | +27 11 658 8100 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.adroit.co.za |
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