Effectively monitoring water infrastructure can lead to identifying and ultimately minimising operational losses. The investment in management and control of water infrastructure is of less value if the cost to operate complex technology does not drive better overall business performance. Water SCADA solutions may include SCADA Software, SCADA Historians (process data historian), PLCs, and RTUs as the core control and monitoring devices. This brief summary simplifies what is usually a complex area wide network of intelligent devices connected by varies technologies including digital mobile, private radio, public networks and private networks provisioned by third parties.
What are Water SCADA Solutions?
Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is a system that provides operators with control over local and remote equipment, as well as monitoring various aspects of operation. Larger enterprise systems span multiple plants, distributed pumping assets, remote automated valves and remote storage.
The treatment of water and waste water against quality standards and the management of waste water overflow are essential elements to being permitted to operate and distribute services to the community in a safe and transparent manner. SCADA is integral to how compliant operations is managed and reported.
Parasyn solutions include plant and network assets control systems, communications systems, enterprise information systems and integration to business systems including EAM (Enterprise Asset Management).
What are the Components of Water SCADA Solutions?
From a more detailed perspective, there are many different components involved in water SCADA systems even if the organisation has a small asset footprint. Though the cost to operate may be smaller, the same technologies to operate and manage plant are still deployed.
Typical components of water information systems include instrumentation, RTU’s, PLC’s, and HMI’s. RTU solutions, or remote terminal units, are the components that connect to sensors on the equipment and other devices that allow them to communicate with the supervisory system. They are typically used on remote plant. They also commonly have some control capabilities. PLC solutions, or programmable logic controllers, are the components that are generally dedicated to plant control, though on larger remote assets often PLCs are preferred due to operational execution speed and perceived performance. Predominantly used on continuous production systems, they are also sometimes used in remote facilities alongside RTUs. HMI solutions, or human-machine interfaces, are those that allow a person to operate and interact with the data that has been received from RTU and PLC devices. HMIs may be Touch Panel based or computer based. More recently operators are using portable devices including smart phones and tablets.
Implement your Information Technology Project with Parasyn
Since 2000, Parasyn has been designing and installing large-scale SCADA projects for companies who operate wastewater and water treatment plants and networks. Parasyn have the education, experience, and knowledge to design new or augment to existing plant and networks. We specialise in solving challenging problems which require a total system design perspective. We have learned from experience that water management is rarely done well by taking a component view of managing individual assets. Here is what one of our water customers said after we helped them solve a multi-million dollar filtration plant problem:
“Class A membranes and the upgrade you performed worked a treat – and that last change on Thursday 21st Dec where the Plant Flow Setpoint changes when the filter comes offline is so beneficial it’s not funny”.
