Do It Yourself SCADA Replacement

Shawn Derrington of Georgetown Municipal Water & Sewer Service offers advice on building the SCADA system you need

By Christopher Little, Trihedral Engineering Limited

When the Georgetown Municipal Water & Sewer Service evaluated the cost of upgrading their existing SCADA software in 2006, they decided it was time to consider replacements. After much research, it became clear that not only was it possible to get all the features they were missing; they could do most of the configuration in-house.

Named in honor of George Washington, Georgetown Kentucky is home to 20,000 residents, a private liberal arts college, and one of the largest car manufacturing plants in the US.

The Georgetown Municipal Water & Sewer Service (GMWSS) is comprised of a water plant, three waste water treatment plants, a few dozen lift stations, and five water towers. These are monitored and controlled by approximately thirty remote telemetry units (RTU’s), each communicating with a central base station RTU over spread spectrum radio.