SCADA Provides Efficiency, Control and Savings

Bill Parks was looking for a more efficient system. Steve Burket wanted more control. Peter Bonk hoped to save energy, time and money.

The new Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system in Manatee County, Florida, gives these three utilities officials just what they wanted. And more.

Last December, Manatee County completed construction on a $1.8-million SCADA system. The system monitors and controls operations, equipment and treatment processes at three regional water reclamation facilities and three reuse water pumping stations. The water reclamation facilities treat a total of approximately 22 million gallons of wastewater per day and, along with the three booster pumping stations, transport reclaimed water to agricultural, residential and recreation site customers throughout the county as part of MARS (Manatee Agricultural Reuse System).

The SCADA system operates at each plant and also shares data among all the facilities. This allows operators at one plant to be aware of what’s happening at all the other plants, according to Gene Robinson, instrumentation and controls group manager at McKim & Creed.

The state-of-the-art system includes features that go beyond a typical SCADA implementation, such as inter-plant coordination capability and data archiving/mining features. “Manatee County can historically archive process information over time so that they can analyze data and trends and have a much better vision of what their processes and their plants are doing from an operational standpoint,” Robinson explains.

The new SCADA system “monitors every function in the treatment plants,” says Parks, who is the superintendent of maintenance for Manatee County’s wastewater treatment facilities.

 “We can control pump stations and monitor the whole MARS system,” adds Burket, superintendent of operations.

“Because we can turn these pumps off sooner, we’re saving energy,” says Bonk, wastewater division manager. “The operators have more control, which releases them to do other duties and lessens the maintenance side of operations.”

Construction Administration

Along with system design, McKim & Creed provided system implementation through development of all the software programming, database configuration, and human machine interface (HMI) programming, as well as construction administration services for the SCADA project. Birmingham, Alabama-based Revere Control Systems served as the general contractor and furnished system hardware installation.

The biggest construction challenge, according to McKim & Creed senior construction administrator Joe Resendes, was keeping all three water reclamation facilities operating throughout construction. “We took out one area of the plant at a time during the day, then switched it over at night,” he says.

In addition, numerous lines and control points had to be relocated and outdated conduit had to be retrofitted, according to Parks.

“McKim & Creed did an outstanding job of moving things to a temporary station and controlling the functions while they totally dismantled our Turbitrol analog system,” he says.

Training

One of the keys to successful SCADA implementation is the training. For this project, “the training was outstanding,” Bonk says.

Revere teamed with McKim & Creed to provide training modules for county employees. Revere taught operators about the hardware associated with the system, and McKim & Creed focused on the software.

Initial training sessions familiarized everyone with the system, and follow-up components were offered several weeks later. “When you have operators working two days on and two off, it’s difficult to schedule training,” says Bonk. McKim & Creed and Revere “extended training over a longer period of time” to accommodate all staff.

Conclusion

The SCADA system brings a new level of efficiency, control and savings to Manatee County’s water reclamation facilities. “Our operators spent a lot of time physically shutting valves on and off,” Burket says. “Now we can monitor the plants from one location. Our operators have a lot more control.”

Manatee County’s system was a “real old Turbitrol analog system,” according to Bill Parks, superintendent of maintenance. Shown here is antiquated graphic display board at the North Water Reclamation Facility, prior to new hardware installation.

Before the SCADA implementation, Manatee County’s facilities were operated manually by switches in the local panels and, in some cases, operator interface touch-panels.

The new human machine interface allows for completely automated facility operations.

This project involved the installation of 3,500 feet of fiber optic cabling to support plant-wide PLC/SCADA communication.

A radio antenna tower is installed for the SCADA system that provides radio communications to the remote booster pumping stations for remote monitoring and control capability.

This image depicts the aerobic / anoxic basins at the Southeast Water Reclamation Facility.

Shown here are the controls and status for the equalization tanks located at the Southeast Water Reclamation Facility.

Shown here is a graphical display of the booster pumps at the 63rd Avenue Reuse Pumping Station.

This screen illustrates the final clarifiers at the North Water Reclamation Facility.

This screen capture shows page 1 of the process diagram for the Southeast Water Reclamation Facility.

This screen shot captures the “at a glance” process information screen.

 Shown here is a filtration and disinfection process diagram from the North Water Reclamation Facility.

The entire site layout of the North Water Reclamation Facility is accessible on the operators’ screens.