Project Description
SCADA System Improvements – Water Treatment and Distribution System Winchester, Kentucky
Magna Engineers served as the engineer for the replacement of the existing supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system for the Winchester Municipal Utilities’ water system.
WMU’s system includes five elevated tank sites, three booster pump station sites, the raw water intake, and the water treatment plant, which serves as the master unit. The old system was a radio-based proprietary system by Aquatrol, which is no longer manufactured. Interface at the water treatment plant was through the use of dual workstation computers running proprietary software.
The new system is PLC based, with Ethernet communication between sites. Communications will remain VHF radio for most sites, with the radios being upgraded with new technology, and meeting FCC’s latest narrow-band requirements. The raw water intake communication was changed to cellular modem, as adequate radio communication was difficult due to terrain. The sites utilize existing wiring and cabinetry. New backplanes sized to match existing were fabricated with all new components, and shipped to the site where the existing were easily swapped with new, and existing wiring re-connected. The tank sites also received new level monitoring via continuous pressure transducers.
The water treatment plant was upgraded with new master programmable logic controller, and redundant servers. The servers run FactoryTalk human-machine interface software, and provide monitoring and control of the remote sites. In addition, plant instruments and equipment which are monitored through the SCADA system were reconnected to new system inputs. The new system includes trending and reporting capabilities in addition to monitoring and control.
