The development of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) over the past two decades has changed the face of many industries. Operation Technology (OT) — largely industrial equipment — has become increasingly connected, and the integration of Information Technology (IT) components allows such devices to leverage software that drives data collection and analysis, resulting in enhanced performance and ultimately "smarter" machines.
Like many other energy companies, Devon Energy, a leading independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company in North America, generates huge volumes of data. The company’s SCADA system monitors 6.5 million data points from multiple sites, with more than 10,000 updates per second.
In 2007, White House Utility District (WHUD), a water utility serving approximately 90,000 consumers and businesses in Tennessee, faced a dilemma: how to meet a projected growing demand for water within the budget and capital constraints faced by municipal and mid-sized utilities everywhere.
One of the nation’s largest four-service utility providers, Colorado Springs Utilities supplies energy and water to over 450,000 people. The state-certified laboratory of the Water Quality Assurance section processes over 14,000 samples and 80,000 analytes per year from eight watersheds, seven finished water treatment facilities, 38 finished water reservoirs, four post-chlorination stations, two wastewater treatment facilities, and over 2700 miles of pipeline.
“We have too much data” is the refrain we continually hear from water utilities. It’s no surprise that managing data from multiple sources and turning it into business insights presents a daunting challenge; however, data influx does not have to be a burden. When managed well, there’s no such thing as too much data, especially if your business is implementing a big data strategy — a topic that has implications and reach beyond the scope of this paper.
At 10am on August 24, 2017, a customer in Midway Point, a small suburb outside of Hobart, Tasmania, reported a sewage spill on his property. Midway Point stands adjacent to Pitt Water Nature Reserve, home to rare birds, butterflies, and the largest oyster lease in Tasmania, covering some 14 hectacres. In late August, Pitt Water oysters, prized for their briny flavor and consistency, were just coming into peak condition.
The OSIsoft PI System is at the center of Thames Water’s “intelligence Hub” (iHub), which merges disparate data sources to drive operational performance. Thames Water can now garner critical insights from its network of water delivery and sewage waste removal systems that span the greater London area.
Yorkshire Water produces 1.3 billion liters of clean water and treats one billion liters of water in its waste water networks every single day. The company has 686 treatment facilities spread across northern England and 83,000 kilometers of water pipelines, which is enough to circle the earth twice.
By 2020, the number of connected things will triple from 6 billion to 20 billion. Digitalization is creating new business opportunities and alternative business models.
This paper shows how the four pillars of operator effectiveness lead operators to greater awareness, faster response and better decisions.
In its quest to gain greater remote accessibility and increase ease of use, a progressive sewerage authority elects to think outside the traditional SCADA box.
Communities around the world are facing a growing storm. Complex challenges including water scarcity, changing demographics, extreme weather patterns, and aging or overly stressed infrastructure are colliding to threaten critical water, energy, transport, enterprise and health networks. The water industry is in the eye of the storm.
Varkom D.D. (Varkom) brings water and wastewater utility services to 175,000 people across seven townships and 20 municipalities in Varaždin County, Croatia. The organization wanted a feasibility study completed to help better manage its assets spanning the 1,650-kilometer supply network, which included 23 water tanks and 36 pressure stations.
Varkom D.D. (Varkom) brings water and wastewater utility services to 175,000 people across seven townships and 20 municipalities in Croatia. The organization wanted a feasibility study completed to help better manage its assets. Read the full case study to learn how the team estimated that 70 percent of time was saved directly in model preparation and an additional 70 percent of time was saved in model management and preliminary design.
XPSTORM is a versatile software package for dynamic modeling of urban stormwater systems, river systems and floodplains including ponds, rivers, lakes, floodplains and interaction with groundwater. This combined 1-dimensional (for upstream to downstream flow) and 2-dimensional (for flow over land) software is widely used by private consultants and public agencies responsible for stormwater and flooding regulation, XPSTORM is one of the most stable and well-accepted modeling and design packages in the world, and has been tested and approved for use by the United States FEMA and UK Environment Agency.
Standard Component - Every VTScada application includes an instantly intuitive Alarm management interface as well as pre-configured alarm and event databases. This integrated approach reduces configuration time and ensures that mission-critical alarm features remain tightly integrated over the life of your system no matter how many times you expand your application or update VTScada.
Build an advanced alarming system that fits the needs of your operation with the Ignition Alarm Notification Module, SMS Notification Module, and the Voice Notification Module to send, receive and acknowledge alarm notifications via email, text message or a phone call.
The MasterLinx Vehicle Reading System is a portable AMR system that's self contained in a small lightweight portable case and is used to capture meter RF transmissions for reporting and input into a billing system.
Carl Alexander, the GIS Director for White House Utility District describes how the utility integrated and used data from the PI System and ArcGIS to recover $900,000 in water being lost through leaks and reduced data prep time from 6 hours to ten minutes.
Thames Water focuses on extracting value from specific combinations of structured and unstructured business data together with real-time operational data provided by Thames' PI System from across more than 3000 plant and 140,000 km of water and sewerage networks.
Matthew Au of Las Vegas Valley Water District describes using AF Transformer to speed up AF structure creation to build a better database.
Dr. Francisco Castillo speaks on their FIELD MOUS system (Field MOnitoring User System), where a PI System acts as a repository of technical data into which different departments plug their data, and other departments access it to fit their particular needs.
With the proliferation of sensors, data collection, and cloud storage, there is the potential for operational insight heretofore never available, and the opportunity will only expand as the technology evolves and the Internet of Things becomes, well, more of a thing. But data is only truly useful if it informs decision-making that results in positive impact — for an organization's bottom line, its personnel, its customers, or even the world at large (i.e., the environment).
Colorado Springs Utilities internal customers can see lab results more quickly and as a result are reducing costs by optimizing their facilities by 30%.
Ian Scott describes the key landmarks in its use of the PI System and the evolution towards using the PI System as the cornerstone infrastructure of its business.
