SUPPLEMENT FEATURE PLCS & INDUSTRIAL PCS
MONITORING AND CONTROL FOR A whole island’s waste water needs
Andrew Robertson, technical director at Tycon Automation, discusses how the company helped the Isle of Man Manx Utilities Water Authority Central Telemetry System by integrating the monitoring and control of the entire Island’s freshwater demands
T
he beginning of this massive investment in automation came with
the renewal and upgrade of the pumping stations. Those that have been refurbished are equipped with pump motor control centres (MCCs) that include the PLCs that enable the end user to monitor reservoir levels, water pressure and flow rates. The system can also immediately identify any pump failures and automatically switch operations to the second pump on standby as and when required. This provided the basis of what is now called the Central Telemetry System (CTS). To achieve the ambition of centralised monitoring the pumping stations represented the first step in a program of upgrading and development that has spanned many years. With all of the major water treatment and distribution assets in place the Isle of Man government had provided a strategic foundation to build on. Both of the water treatment facilities at Douglas
delivering benefits far beyond its original remit. With the integrated approach adopted by Tycon Automation the CTS now
contains strategic features such as: ●
functionality. ●
Planned preventative maintenance On call staff management system and
on-call out of hours alarming via SMS. ●
support for the plant operation. ●
quality issues. ●
management. ●
Above and below left: a Central Telemetry System (CTS) is being used for the monitoring and control of the entire freshwater demands of the Isle of Man
I/O racks in each of the main process MCCs, of which there are three for process redundancy. Within each of the MCCs is an industrial touch screen PC running the SCADA client software so that all of the plant is available for control and monitoring at all of the locations.”
and Sulby used the latest PLC and SCADA technology from Mitsubishi, incorporating intelligent network architectures to retrieve data from devices and communicate and control the statuses of the plant to the operator. Each of the water treatment facilities on the island operates dual redundant SCADA technology that allows the instant duty changeover of the server SCADA should any hardware issues arise. Robertson commented, “The
requirement from the outset was for a fully redundant system. The Mitsubishi QnPRH PLCs are designed to work in a redundant set-up and therefore met the specification precisely. The system was designed with two processor racks and two
S16 NOVEMBER 2014 | PLCS & INDUSTRIAL PCS
EVOLUTION Following the completion of the Douglas WTW the CTS has continued to evolve its system architecture to keep in line with the advances of modern remote communication technologies. In the original form the Data Gathering Outstations (DGO) for the collation of the island wide data, numbered only six and relied on the PSTN telecommunication technologies for this activity. With the demands of more sites and more data, the number of DGOs has increased to ten and the requirement for real time rather than dial-up data has been realised. The ten DGOs are now connected to the CTS through real time secure VPN links across the internet and there is no longer any traditional PSTN technology used in the CTS data gathering functions. From this involved and sophisticated
architecture at the plant level both the Sulby and Douglas WTW provided the foundation for the Central Telemetry System to evolve even further. In conjunction with managing the more functional alarming and control aspects of the control system, the CTS is now
Critical alarm and response Automated delivery monitoring of
raw materials. ●
reporting. ●
Power and chemical usage and
Web-based reporting packages, including board level reports with
financial detail. ●
Strategic remote access to allow for
service support activity by Tycon. The features and benefits of the CTS
evolved around the operational, maintenance, quality and business requirements of these plants and the end user. With the recognition of the power that such an architecture provided, the water authority had the foresight to continue to invest in the system which has brought about an evolution that has seen the CTS change from a visualisation and alarming tool to an island wide control system. The CTS has made the transition to a
system that now allows the full monitoring control capabilities of all of the assets within the water production and distribution system from either a central or decentralised location. With the further added benefit to the water authority of providing real time strategic and statistical data. This data is collated, formatted and reported for the company executives to make better business decisions helping them increase production and improve efficiencies across their business.
Tycon Automation
www.tyconautomation.co.uk T: 01978 855 662
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