Water Distribution

A mid-sized Northeast Ohio municipality had a distribution system consisting of two large water tanks that require monitoring 24/7/365.  The tanks communicated with the main water treatment plant through the use of leased telephone lines.  At the plant the tank levels were fed into a chart recorder which was also responsible for controlling the city’s pumps.  Over time the leased lines aged considerably, and the monthly cost and difficulty of servicing the lines and equipment began to outweigh the benefits.  The plant was only manned 8 hours per day and personnel only had limited notifications for critical conditions outside these hours. In addition the city had an existing SCADA system for monitoring their in-plant information and wanted to incorporate the information from the distribution system.

The city was already familiar with web based hosted solutions and their benefits so they contacted a Data-Command sales representative for help in providing a solution. Within a short period of time the Data-Command certified partner installed Data-Command compliant products that utilized cellular technology at the tank sites.  The information from the tanks was sent to Data-Command’s data centers and the web interface was configured to display city information and notify employees of pertinent events. Through Data-Command’s transport technology, those values were then sent to another Data-Command compliant product connected to the water plant’s chart recorder as well as the Data-Command OPC SCADA interface software operating on the plant’s SCADA computer.

The elimination of the old leased lines immediately cut the city’s monitoring costs in half and allowed them to monitor their distribution system and receive additional critical alerts at any time of the day or night. The Data-Command OPC SCADA interface software allowed the client’s existing SCADA system to display and log information for use during work hours eliminating the need for the operator to go to multiple places to view information. By eliminating the expensive cost of leased lines and the maintenance and cost of an auto dialer system, while at the same time providing 24 hour a day web based monitoring and alerts, Data-Command was able to provide an excellent solution for yet another quality client.