Prince Albert water network monitoring

October 2007 Fieldbus & Industrial Networking

The SSE Maestro RTU and Picasso OPC were recently installed at Prince Albert Municipality for monitoring and controlling the pump stations, boreholes and reservoirs. The system now gives the client full control and monitoring capabilities from one central point via a Citect scada operator station.

A graphical user interface is customised to show the complete water network and what is happening on the system in realtime.

Boreholes can be monitored and controlled with three different modes of operation to permit the supply of water to the town without human intervention. Local reservoirs are monitored and histograms of the reservoirs can be viewed on screen, printed or exported for use in spreadsheets.

The system also acts as an alarming facility to notify operators of any problems. As well as audible alarming, selected alarms are also sent to an operator's cellphone in a very descriptive readable format to decrease downtime of the system.

From the operator screen users can monitor the status of the pumps and the local reservoir at the waterworks. Current running hours and total running hours are displayed for each pump. There is a separate reservoir display allowing a quick visual overview of the reservoir status.

Since implementation the water network efficiency has drastically improved and the running costs reduced. The Citect scada provides operational functionality and valuable historical data. This data is used for management reporting enabling future network planning, water saving and budgeting. The system will be expanded in the future as the domestic water requirement increases.

For more information contact Clive Maasch, SSE Cape, +27 (0)21 552 0420, [email protected], www.sse.co.za

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