Adroit provides a simple solution at Amatola Water.
The growth of East London-based Amatola Water’s radio telemetry system meant a new monitoring system was required to meet the growing needs. User friendliness was key – and an Adroit scada system was chosen to fulfil the objectives.
Amatola’s Radio & Telemetry section’s senior technician, Gerry Roux, has been in radio telemetry since 1982. His extensive experience, coupled with Adroit’s easy-to-use scada package has enabled Gerry to do most of the outstation set-up, configuration, and the intricate mimic backgrounds at Amatola Water himself. “Adroit is a very user-friendly, intuitive package and hence it can all be done in-house,” he explains.
As a bulk, purified water distributor, with main customers: Amatola District Municipality and Buffalo City Municipality, this local water board covers an extensive area from East London to the Fish River - approximately 6500 square km.
The reticulation system consists of three large plants, and another four smaller ones and the balance of the outstations consist of reservoirs that require monitoring. The scada actively monitors plant operation and reservoir levels for the 96 outstations, and sends reports via radio telemetry to a central PC running Adroit version 6.
The first Adroit system was installed in 2002 to replace an existing system that was perceived as not very user friendly or easy to configure. Telemetry experts and system integrators, SSE, created the basic component graphics and screen layouts for the original system; they also assisted with the migration to Adroit. Gerry has subsequently taken the original overview graphics, and using an area map obtained from the geographic information system (GIS) division created a background for the mimic screens that provides an accurate account of where the outstations are located.
Amatola Water has a 5000 tag Adroit licence, but are currently only using about 3000 of those. “We are only using about 25% of Adroit’s potential because it is not necessary to get any more complicated. I believe in the KISS principle of simplicity,” says Gerry.
Unlike the complex architecture of an average manufacturing plant, the limitations of radio telemetry on hard wiring ensure that the solutions are kept simple and effective. “The most complicated part of the system, is explaining to non-technical people that they are not viewing the operations in realtime,” jokes Gerry, who has added an onscreen time stamp, scripted by Adroit, to assist with this.
The scada is primarily used for monitoring the status of the reservoirs and major pump stations. Each major plant has a PC, with Adroit remote view software, linked to the main Adroit server via the IT wide area network (WAN). Matching the system to the skills levels of its staff, Amatola has designed the system in such a way that remote PCs can only view the portion of the water reticulation that their area covers with limited access to commands – some of the stations having pump stop/start command capability.
Where automatic control is required ie, stopping and starting of pumps via level control, this is handled by the telemetry’s programmable RTUs, which are configured in a standalone architecture. The OPC interface does allow for the RTUs to be programmed remotely, thus level control parameters can be changed on request.
The status of outstation alarms are depicted on screen with green, red, orange and yellow as well as flashing colour symbols to show critical water levels.
Plant operators also rely on Adroit’s trending function for overnight and weekend monitoring. Managers have a view-only mode of plant operations in their offices to facilitate reporting and business decision-making.
At the major plants, the Adroit scada monitors flow with data collected from the Magflow meters. Totals, turbidity, and sampling meters are amongst those used for rudimentary data display purposes.
The six major pump stations have PLC controlled MC panels. The telemetry RTU is connected to the PLC via a serial interface using Modbus protocol and provides the ability to monitor all the inputs as well as providing the facility for remote modifications of key measurement and control parameters within the PLC.
For more information contact Monica Mynhardt, Adroit Technologies, +27 (0)11 658 8100, [email protected], www.adroit.co.za
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