As the demand for efficiency at water utilities continues to grow, the importance of high-performance SCADA technology has never been greater. But that performance is no longer limited to the plant. Traditionally, SCADA stood for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, and, of course, for water and wastewater plants, we know it as an industrial computer system that monitors and controls the plant’s process operations. However, there’s great potential for the data acquisition function of SCADA in many other important areas. One of the most interesting is the role SCADA will play in the Smart City revolution. We’ll explore that subject with an expert from Schneider-Electric—but first, let’s look at some of the latest products that are boosting SCADA productivity.
Mobile access is a major development in SCADA monitoring and performance, and the popularity of smartphones has led to some great products for operators that spend lots of time on their feet, rather than stuck to a desk. For example, Data Flow Systems (DFS), based in Melbourne, FL, offers its HT3 Mobile product, a streamlined version of the DFS, HT3 desktop SCADA system, but optimized for smartphones. To address security concerns, DFS has eliminated the Java runtime environment, and it is password protected. Yet, operators will still find an amazing volume of features, such as control of alarms, screens, trends, and stations. For report updates, there’s access to standard reports, including analog, derived flow, detail, minimum/maximum average, pulse, and pump activity.
Going mobile makes a big difference, according to Richard Kornbluh, utilities manager of the city of Longwood, FL. He reports that using HT3 Mobile has reduced the number of hours required for onsite presence at the utility’s water plants, and improved overall efficiency by increasing the amount of time that personnel can work in other areas.
When personnel are called to work outside of the plant, they’ll be too late if a problem arises of a burst pipe resulting from pressure transients. Yet, the cost of water pipe bursts from those transients is an unnecessary expense, according to the engineers at Fluid Conservation Systems in Milford, OH. By using a data logger, operators can be proactive rather than reactive, and monitor transients to prevent pipe bursts. A water pressure spike is often just a fraction of a second, so a data logger has to be fast enough to catch the spike and record it for analysis. Fluid Conservations Systems’ new Pressure Transient logger has an expanded 4GB of flash memory and stores up to 8 billion readings.
For further protection of utility assets, FCS offers a variety of leak detection products, including correlators to pinpoint leaks in underground water mains, leak noise loggers to localize the general area of a leak, and pressure controllers to minimize leakage.
Historian
Data loggers can track specific assets at a utility, but SCADA systems collect a wide variety of information, and that’s where a historian can have an impact on a plant’s operations.
Moreover, there’s significant value in collecting long-term data. For example, the City of Rochester Bureau of Water had 12 years of useful data from operations at its Hemlock treatment plant, but working with the legacy Structured Query Language (SQL) database was inefficient, so the city moved to a system from Canary Labs, Martinsburg, PA.
Canary Labs provides data historian and trending applications, and upgraded Rochester to a suite of products that includes Enterprise Historian, Trend Link, and Canary Mobile. The task involved converting 12 years of data from a custom SQL database to the Canary Labs Enterprise Historian, along with archiving data from real-time data points programmable logic controllers (PLCs) throughout the complex. City personnel access the Canary Trend Link for ad hoc analysis and reporting purposes, and the Canary Mobile applications allow remote access.
“Utilities need to collect historical data,” says Ed Stern, vice president of marketing for Canary Labs. “But many think they have historical data because their HMI [Human Machine Interface] may collect a month or two. However, the real value comes from years of data that allow you to see the big picture. Many HMI systems leave holes in the data, because either it was shut down or there wasn’t room to keep enough data online. When you’re troubleshooting, you want to go back to a certain date and see if there was an equipment failure such as a pump blowing up. Was it the equipment, or an operator error?”
For ease of transition to a new system, Canary products are designed for the non-technical operator. “You don’t want your operators running to IT all the time asking them to help with the data,” says Stern. “They should be able to do ad hoc entries or changes, and choose new tags or variables for a time frame. Then it’s easy to look at trends and hit a button to export the data to Excel. And there are other things, such as allowing the operators to attach annotations to a tag, because that’s very valuable in the water industry. For example, things are going along and all of a sudden a fairly stable value jumps. When the regulators come in and ask why, it’s explained if an operator made a note that said they calibrated the sensor on that particular day and the values shifted. So you can make notes on why certain things happen, in case an auditor comes back six or eight months later and challenges your staff. Also, I’ve heard of disgruntled employees complaining about the utilities policies and if you have the historian’s data you can prove that it didn’t happen or that it didn’t happen the way the accusation stands, so the data can prove this.”
In 2013, Canary Labs partnered with Ocean Data Systems, Wayland, MA, a manufacturer of Dream Report, and other industrial reporting and data analytics products. “Dream Report is a great solution for automated reporting and data analytics, and it is the standard for reporting for one of our Data Historian OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], ARC Informatique,” says Stern. “The Dream Report–Proven Partner program is an ideal way to show our joint customers a unified front and commitment to work together.”
According to Roy Kok, vice president of sales and marketing at Ocean Data Systems Ltd., Dream Report is a tool for report generation for compliance and performance information and delivery. “Industries and utilities have compliance reports they have to generate,” Kok explains, “and for water and wastewater treatment plants there are many reports needed for the EPA and other regulators.”
Asset Performance
Beyond compliance reports, operators are also targeting asset performance. “People are looking for reports on energy use,” says Kok. “They want to know how much energy was used, and how much a certain batch cost. Then there’s machine performance, including uptime and downtime. Or, can I improve the process within my facility? In an industry such as pharmaceuticals, you have to report on the quality of the product, and it’s critical because if these operations aren’t running properly you may have to scrap hundreds of thousands of dollars of worth of product.”
SCADA system overview
Creating reports can often be complicated, and involve hours or even days of labor. But according to Kok, operators don’t have dread the task anymore. “Our product makes those reports very easy to do and you can now have any report you want, not just a compliance report. We can make a report in 10 or 15 minutes and it’s completely automated and shows up in your inbox every morning if that’s what you want. Or you can post it to a Web portal. Now you’re changing the game in report generation.”
Dream Report also has notification systems so operators can put alerts on data values based on parameters. The alerts can be delivered by a text message or an e-mail. Kok notes that he’s seen a growing emphasis on continuous improvement at the plant process level, and the use of reports can contribute to a plant’s goals. “You can decide on the key performance indicators and the calculations you want to keep an eye on. For instance, that could be machine downtime, and Dream Report can deliver a machine downtime report or machine performance report on a regular basis. So, on every Monday morning, you could look at last week’s performance of your equipment and as you do, you become accustomed to seeing the data. Then when something goes astray, you see it and bring out your analytic tools to discover why. But until you get that regular delivery of information you won’t know what’s normal and have the ability to detect what’s abnormal. That’s why report generators are so important. They are bridging the gap between the real-time operator interface and the analysis tools you need to make positive change.”
Another company that has partnered with Ocean Data Systems is Trihedral, based in Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada. In late 2014, Ocean Data Systems announced that Trihedral had teamed up with Ocean Data Systems to provide seamless integration of Dream Report with VTScada, which is Trihedral’s SCADA solution that focuses on instant productivity. Trihedral is contributing to the development of specialized real-time alarm and historic data interfaces. Ultimately, these interfaces will become a standard part of the Dream Report product. One of Trihedral’s key goals was to have Dream Report support VTScada’s unique tag hierarchy, allowing users to easily find the tags they need.
Trihedral’s business model represents a growing trend in the SCADA industry, as it’s an independent organization not affiliated with any hardware. Thus, it provides an open architecture and support for a wide variety of platforms. Essentially, its non-proprietary SCADA and VTScada’s hardware independence and open connectivity support all major PLCs and RTUs. VTScada is used in water/wastewater, oil and gas, power, marine, broadcasting, food and beverage, manufacturing, airport solutions, and more. One recent example from the wastewater industry comes from the Houghton Lake Sewer Authority’s (HLSA) sewage facility for the townships of Denton, Lake, and Roscommon. Support for the HLSA’s legacy software was discontinued, and the system’s reliability was deemed inadequate. One of the main requirements for a replacement was the ability to send alarms to cell phones as text messages instead of using the alpha-numeric pagers. The VTScada 10.1 auto alarm dialer allows for sequential e-mails, text messages, or automated voice calls to a maximum of 30 users, and the acknowledgement of alarms via e-mails, text messages, or interactive voice response. VTScada includes a Zetron communication driver and a utility for easily converting the input/output tag database from their existing application.
Technology Changes
Replacing or upgrading a legacy system to something more modern is challenging, but evaluating the new system can make all the difference in the project’s success, according to Alan Cone, marketing manager, Siemens Corp. “There has been a lot of consolidation over the years in the SCADA markets and some utilities are faced with having two different product lines,” says Cone. “The challenge of merging them is in choosing one product in favor of another, or choosing both of them in determining a migration path for moving forward.
“Then, they have to look at what’s changed in technology. Five years ago, people were looking to use cell phones and iPads to get their information, and before that the Web was a big thing on the factory floor. So utilities have to decide if they want to keep things the same or take advantage of the technology changes. For example, touchscreen monitors are available now and they offer a lot more flexibility with operator interfacing. So, is it smart to spend a lot of time trying to adapt to these new technologies, or rethink everything and start with a clean sheet of paper to redo everything from scratch?”
If a utility is working with Siemens’ Win CC products, they have the capability to reach back and pull in projects from previous versions. “We can actually go as far back as five versions of software,” says Cone. “So a customer can take their project to our current system without losing data. That’s something you have to look at in your choice of systems. Does the vendor support long-term capabilities as a technology changes over time?”
Win CC is Siemens’ HMI application, and it’s the family name for HMI software at the panel level. It’s one of the SCADA systems that Siemens provides and allows access to the motor control center for information on motors and amps and voltage. SCADA systems are built for analysis and control so operators can see that everything is running properly. They can set alarms and if a typical running value comes up and an alarm goes off, it’s possible there’s more demand being put on the motor, or maintenance needed.
The Web-based reporting capabilities and on-demand reporting capabilities of Win CC are gaining in popularity. Cone explains, “With a Web feed from the SCADA system, operators can look at a daily report and use tags to identify the device. They can add time stamps so they can have it in the database and see it right there. One of the big things is on-demand reporting capabilities, where you can go in there with a dashboard and customize a report to what you want, which may be different from the guy sitting down the hall.”
Recently, Siemens released a product called Web QNX, which takes some of the same information from the system and allows access from smartphones and tablet devices. “It’s very helpful for maintenance people who need information, and for managers that just want a quick look at what’s going on in the plant. Also, quality control staff can get a quick look into things if they don’t need a full terminal for access and control.
Optimizing and the Environment
As long as we’re on the subject of control, we’d do well to visit two innovative environmental projects at DC Water’s Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant in Washington DC. With a capacity of 370 million gallons
per day, Blue Plains is the largest plant of its kind in the world, and it’s in the final stages of commissioning an enhanced nutrient removal, thermal hydrolysis and an anaerobic digestion system. Both projects will help the utility comply with EPA regulations to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and both will use a control system from Emerson, based in St. Louis, MO, to optimize operations.
The Ovation system will monitor and control digesters, final dewatering and other equipment and processes, as well as interface to the combined heat and power plant (CHP). Blue Plains will be the first plant in North America and the largest in the world to utilize a thermal hydrolysis process, developed by Cambi, a Norway-based firm that has had years of success with their systems in Europe. The CHP plant supplies heat and power to the thermal hydrolysis and anaerobic digestion system, which reduces biosolids by 50%.
DC Water reports that the transition is running smoothly, and credits the success to its implementation of an automation master plan that was years in the making. In the late 1990s, DC Water began a transition from manual operation to a distributed control system, and undertook some complex capital upgrades. In 2010, after 10 years of work and expenses of $1.2 billion, the utility found that labor costs decreased and staff was reduced from 160 to 60 operators, while the plant’s overall efficiency increased.
Insight
As we’ve seen from the previous examples, SCADA systems offer many options inside the plant. Now, let’s shift our view to beyond the plant, and get some perspective from Rudy Engart, Vertical Manager of Infrastructure, Water & Wastewater, Energy and Smart City, Schneider-Electric, Andover, MA. Engart’s responsibilities include monitoring the Smart City impact on infrastructure, transportation, prisons, and water and wastewater.
“I see a large trend towards innovation,” says Engart. “A lot of things are driving water and wastewater utilities and helping to solve problems from the top down. Traditionally, that’s not where the software focus has been. Yet, the potential is mind-boggling to use the data from assets and infrastructure and services. One of the key things is that water and wastewater is a critical system that the city really needs to be cognizant of. When you’re trying to manage growth, you need to be aware of how much water you have available, how to best distribute it, and how to take the wastewater, treat it effectively, and take it back to the ecosystem. People aren’t taking advantage of that potential for insight even though the data is there in the SCADA systems.”
Some examples of that potential include the software’s capability to direct workflow in the process. For example, a pump alerts the maintenance department that it’s time for a checkup. Now an operator can instruct a program to interface the maintenance software to alert the staff and create a work order. The onsite maintenance staff can use a technology-based handheld device or mobile device that takes the worker step-by-step through the procedure of doing the pumps maintenance. Any information such as vibration, temperature, speed, and differential pressures that go along with these situations gets entered into the mobile device, and the data passes to a real-time data system.
Ultimately, performance data can add to the understanding of a city’s overall operations, Engart notes, “When you have the ability to put a high level platform above all these individual systems within a city, all that information can be fed directly into the platform . . . I could look at traffic patterns and pressure of water within the water distribution system. All within the same context and add weather information and building information and energy costs and their all in one single platform and that’s where the power of the solution comes into play. The issue with seeing the big picture is that many city managers don’t know about that yet. But the director of public utilities wants to know—what is the cost of a kilowatt-hour per treated gallon of water, and where is the nonrevenue water coming from? That data comes from the process and now all we have to do is pull it.”
Within the Smart City framework, Engart also sees the role of AMI developing quickly. “You want flow meters and power meters and assets that can give you the type of information you need. The more real-time data you have, the more live data you can connect, aggregate, and disseminate. The more granular the data, the better. For example, you can identify something—like a fire hydrant’s pressure might be too low—or you could be experiencing a problem in a lift station where you’re not moving water fast enough. Although it’s not, it’s actually critical to have such information at the city management level. The wave is coming where the top upper-level executives will ask for this data.”
Overall, we could expand upon Engart’s perspective and say that the wave is coming to all aspects of SCADA systems. From smartphones to smart cities, the technology is providing a level of data access that truly does have mind-boggling potential.
