Glastonbury Festival is the largest ‘Greenfield’ music and performing arts festival in the world and a template for all the festivals that have come after it. Event organisers choose Omniflex wireless telemetry equipment to ensure that water is delivered across the site effectively, efficiently and economically.
The Festival takes place in a beautiful location in the Vale of Avalon on an enormous site more than two and a half kilometres across, with a perimeter of about 13 and a half kilometres. During the festival period the local population increases by around 175 000 people.
The challenge
The infrastructure necessary to host such an event is diverse and complicated. The festival was 40 years old this year and has grown hugely since it first started in 1970. Glastonbury now requires nearly 4 million litres of water over a period of five days. There are over 700 hand basins and 100 standpipes located around the site to provide fresh water for drinking and washing. As the festival has grown so too has the demand for a good supply of water to all the facilities across the site.
In order to address this requirement, two new 2 million litre capacity reservoirs and a pumping station have been built at the highest point on the site. Previously road tankers were used to import water onto the site, which was then stored in ‘bladder tanks’ around the site.
The conditions for holding this year’s festival demanded a water pressure of 1,2 bars at the vast number of water outlets. The challenge was therefore to ensure water pressure measurements at various points around the site were constantly available to the pumping station. The difficulty and cost of installing cabled infrastructure made a radio telemetry system the best option.
The solution
After reviewing alternative bids and carrying out field trials, Glastonbury chose the Omniflex M2G RTUs. The system installed comprised of 3xM2R 868 MHz radio telemetry systems in the form of two slave units located at different points on the perimeter of the festival and one master unit located at the pumping station.
Sequence of operation
Pressure sensors located in the pipe work provide 4-20 mA analogue input signals to the two slave units, which then transmit this data via the 868 MHz un-licensed radio frequency to the master unit situated in the pumping station. This data is then supplied via the RS232/485 Serial modbus port into an ABB controller, which is responsible for bringing on or taking off-line a bank of pumps within the pumping station dependent on the demand for water.
The M2R units are capable of accepting both digital and analogue inputs. Although this year’s project required analogue inputs only it is the intention to increase the functionality of the system for future festivals.
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