Improved operational efficiency and reduced response time to plant failures for Meath County Council
EMR recently secured a €250,000 contract win with Meath County Council to provide real-time monitoring of the county’s wastewater facilities
The primary objective of the project is to improve operational efficiency and reduce response times to plant failures. The initial system comprises a web-connected SCADA server linked via high power radio to 30 main wastewater collection and treatment assets.
Business Challenge
Compliance with EU monitoring requirements and pressure to reduce leaks in the network, coupled with a desire to improve overall network efficiency led Meath’s Water Services Section to seek bidders to implement a wide-area SCADA system. EMR were awarded the contract thanks to solid network design and a proven track record of working with other authorities on similar projects.
The Solution
To achieve the council’s objectives for the project, EMR installed a comprehensive UHF radio network and Motorola ACE3600 RTUs, monitoring the performance of all key plants from a central web accessible SCADA server. Following initial deployment, the network was extended to cover the water treatment and distribution assets and now includes over 100 sites operating over UHF radio.
In addition, the system linked via GSM with over 200 metering points where flows and water quality data is collected at regular intervals across the entire distribution network. The system provides a comprehensive platform for the monitoring, control, reporting and analysis of all aspects of network performance.
Alarms relating to on-site faults are sent by SMS text message directly to staff mobile phones and response times have improved significantly.
Benefits
From a management perspective, the benefits of the system have been enormous. Automatic report generation has significantly reduced the effort involved in complying with EU reporting obligations while water quality has improved as a result of the continuous monitoring and reduced down-times resulting from equipment failures.
With the integration of data from the SMS data loggers on the distribution network management now have a holistic view of their water network from the moment water is abstracted from the river or ground water source right the way through to the consumers.
This integrated view has facilitated reductions in waste, improved reliability and quality and reduced the cost of service delivery.
Why EMR?
“EMR have demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of the requirements of our application and have delivered a feature rich radio-based SCADA solution,” said Fergus Duffy of Meath County Council. “It greatly improves our ability to see what’s happening on our network and respond to incidents in a timely fashion.”
