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Switch to SCADA Cloud-Based Monitoring and Control

April 5, 2022 | Product News

Water and wastewater treatment plants, lift stations and wells rely on alarm notifications to alert them when critical events happen. Without notifications, incidents can have severe consequences to businesses and end-users. Traditional phone lines are susceptible to lightning, surges and other weather-related events causing undetected communication losses. Cloud-based solutions monitor the status of communications and can notify personnel immediately of a communication failure. They provide 24/7 access to communication status, critical events and data from any laptop or mobile device.

Watch a 20-minute REPLAY webinar where we focus on the risks of using phone line alarm dialers. Hear from our guest speaker, Tim Tomasko with The DAS Group, as he reviews first-hand customer experiences and benefits when switching to a real-time cloud-based solution.

Join the REPLAY here!

Oscillation Flow Meter for Dry or Wet, Damp, and Moist Gases

March 29, 2022 | Product News

Application Note: Water Treatment SCADA Upgrade

March 28, 2022 | Application Notes Municipal: Water / Wastewater / Landfill

Abstract

A water treatment company in north-central PA had an 11 year old Foxboro PAC control system (Schneider Electric’s Eurotherm company made these controllers for Foxboro). The municipality has two treatment facilities about three miles apart, connected via Fiber and using Profibus communication protocol. Approximately 2010, Foxboro did a large upgrade and installed two T940 controllers (one at each facility) with three 2500 series I/O racks at one facility and two at the other – approximately 350 I/O points. There was also a pair of radios bringing in a single tank level at one facility.

Problem

Unfortunately, two major problems occurred — the tank radio had taken a close proximity lightning hit and been destroyed, and Foxboro no longer supported the PAC series due to obsolescence. The company had been quoted $350K to replace the entire system with new technology, and were challenged by the steep price.

Neal Systems was contracted because of our unique background with the PAC T940 and 2500 series controllers. Our scope was to remove the T940’s and replace them with a newer Eurotherm T2750 control system, which would allow the customer to maintain ALL the field wiring with no TB changes or even changes to the I/O. At the same time, the comms protocol was changed from a hard-to- support Profibus to an easy- to-support Modbus TCP protocol. The failed radios were replaced with Elpro 905U-1 I/O radios and used a spare AI channel to add the tank level in (also replaced the antenna, cable and PT at the tank). Three SCADA Wonderware nodes were also upgraded to the latest revision of software.

Solution

At the end of the project, the customer had a working, updated system that was easier to support, and estimated that they paid $150K for the total system, instead of the approximately $350k that they would have had to pay with a Rockwell Allen-Bradley solution, which would have required replacing all of the controllers, writing new code, and doing new panels.

Featured Products

Eurotherm T2750 Power Controller

Elpro 905U-1 Radio

Reciprocating Compressor Monitoring

March 24, 2022 | Product News

CASE STUDY: MUNICIPAL SCADA TELEMETRY UPGRADE

March 15, 2022 | Product News

With the continual growth of cites and demand for infrastructure increasing from this growth ELPRO Technologies was selected to provide a wide area digital telemetry and SCADA network for a growing municipality in Australia with outlying regional townships. Read the case study HERE.