SCADA Interface

The nation’s largest U.S.-based, publicly-traded water company, providing water and wastewater services to approximately 2.8 million residents in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, New Jersey, Indiana, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Maine, Missouri, New York and South Carolina, had several small water production facilities located 200 miles or more from the larger operations facility. This operations facility had management and monitoring responsibilities but the daily operations and maintenance was still handled on a local level at the remote facilities. These facilities’ monitoring information had to be viewable at multiple locations by multiple personnel. The company had an existing SCADA system and were able to consolidate the information but needed to distribute it.  Because their SCADA system, like many SCADA products, did not support web based viewing and configuration very well, they simply did not want to expose their system to the internet by opening portals through their network security firewall.

The company contacted Data-Command for help in providing a solution. The Data-Command OPC SCADA interface software was installed on the plant’s SCADA computer.  Once installed the software began sending information from the local SCADA system to Data-Command’s data centers. The client themselves easily configured their web displays, validated their information, and set up notification and alert schedules, along with system trend charts.

Since Data-Command’s OPC SCADA interface software works behind a firewall with no open incoming ports, the SCADA system is not exposed to the internet and through Data-Command’s web portal, company management was instantly able to view real-time and historical information, as well as system trends.  Also, the company was able to easily set up alert parameters in order to receive notifications any time system levels breached their tolerances. In addition, company management acquired global access to its information, doubly important as it continued to grow and expand.  By providing a scalable, modern, easily accessible solution, Data-Command was able to exceed the needs of this quality client.