Water Online the Magazine gives Water & Wastewater Engineers and end-users a venue to find project solutions and source valuable product information. We aim to educate the engineering and operations community on important issues and trends.
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Application Just Add SCADA Internet-hosted SCADA systems are a modern answer to modern municipal water and wastewater concerns. by Thelma Akwei and Ben Manlongat ater and wastewater utilities are under increas- ing pressure to prevent service disruption, control costs, and provide management and regulators with detailed process information. This requires a modern supervisory control and data acquisi- tion (SCADA) system, including remote monitoring and con- trol hardware such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and remote terminal units (RTUs), a communication network (usually radio-based), and a human machine interface (HMI) software application running on one or more networked computers. Many utilities simply cannot afford either the up- front cost of this infrastructure or the long-term maintenance it requires. This article describes how a hosted Internet solu- tion can help such utilities quickly achieve advanced SCADA systems that would have been impossible considering the costs of traditional SCADA architecture. W matter of days or weeks, not months or years. Hosted solutions eliminate the upfront hardware costs and software licensing fees required to install a traditional SCADA system. In addition, there is no need to maintain licensing support contracts, server computers, or an IT department. A custom overview screen for monitoring remote buildings. Displays status of communication links, alarms, and equipment. A detailed pump station screen: monitors well levels, pumps, alarms, station power, panel temperature, and communication links; controls pumps, pump setpoints, and well alarm setpoints. Hosted SCADA Solutions – A New Approach In an Internet-hosted SCADA solution, equipment information from each remote site is transmitted via cellular modems to a central third-party SCADA software application. For a month- ly fee, authorized utility personnel can monitor and control their equipment, change system set points, view active and historical alarms, and create custom reports. Secure Internet clients provide customer access from any computer with an Internet connection. This allows utilities to adopt a complete SCADA system including mission-critical components like trending, alarm dialer, remote access, and system redundancy that they could otherwise not afford using traditional server architecture. A working system can be up and running in a 38 Water Online The Magazine, Wastewater Edition ■ wateronline.com In 2010, systems integrator Kennedy Industries, Inc., devel- oped its own cloud-based SCADA system, KI Station Master (KISM), to meet the needs of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). MDOT was considering a SCADA system to monitor and control pump controllers at 160 sta- tions across the state of Michigan. Due to the large number of sites that MDOT wanted to monitor, Kennedy Industries proposed KISM as an efficient way to meet MDOT's needs. After a careful review, MDOT approved the proposal not only because of the features of KISM, but also because the hosted application is installed at a server farm in Michigan. A SCADA Software Central Hosted solutions require a SCADA software application to provide a central repository for process information collected from each client utility. The application makes this informa- tion available to the appropriate utility via online graphic dis- plays, reports, and trend viewers. It is important to research and examine various aspects of a system (thin client, thick client, cloud, or local installation) before choosing a SCADA platform for the hosted solution. Kennedy selected VTScada software from Trihedral because of its built-in communication drivers for more than 100 different devices, making it easy to connect to any type of equipment. It also provides the capa- bility to perform hosting by grouping all customer areas into