PROJECT: REMOTE MONITORING AND CONTROL
Centralised Plant Control
In a municipal area stretching around 125km between different plants, operations teams were dependent on feedback from plant operators for an overview of plant operations.
Since not all plants were staffed, some teams were performing daily site visits to confirm that the plants were running and that the water quality was within specifications.
Travelling to the different sites resulted in considerable time and fuel costs.
Internet connections were established in all plants and a VPN was configured for communication between plants and a central data centre. A virtual machine running in the data centre hosts an open source SCADA package. Data is transferred from each PLC in the plant to the SCADA.
Mimics representing pumps and tanks and all other relevant equipment were developed so that operators could monitor and control equipment remotely, from any device with an internet connection. This remote control eliminated the need for daily site visits and freed up time for other activities.
