AIR & WATER

MONITORING NEWSLETTER  

March 2013
No. 401

Interned Hosted SCADA an Answer for Water and Wastewater Utilities

In an Internet-hosted SCADA solution, equipment information from each remote site is transmitted via cellular modems to a central third-party SCADA software application. For a monthly fee, authorized utility personnel can monitor and control their equipment, change system set points, view active and historical alarms and create custom reports. Secure Internet clients provide customer access from any computer with an Internet connection. This allows utilities to adopt a complete SCADA system including mission-critical components like trending, alarm dialer, remote access and system redundancy that they could otherwise not afford using traditional server architecture. A working system can be up and running in a matter of days or weeks, not months or years.

Thelma Akwel of Trihedral and Ben Manlongat of Kennedy, writing in Water Online, provide an example of success for the hosted approach.

Hosted solutions eliminate the upfront hardware costs and software licensing fees required to install a traditional SCADA system. In addition, there is no need to maintain licensing support contracts, server computers, or an IT department.

In 2010, systems integrator Kennedy Industries, Inc., developed its own cloud-based SCADA system, KI Station Master (KISM), to meet the needs of the Michigan Dept. of Transportation (MDOT). MDOT was considering a SCADA system to monitor and control pump controllers at 160 stations across the state of Michigan. Due to the large number of sites that MDOT wanted to monitor, Kennedy Industries proposed KISM as an efficient way to meet MDOT’s needs.

Kennedy selected VTScada software from Trihedral because of its built-in communication drivers for more than 100 different devices, making it easy to connect to any type of equipment. It also provides the capability to perform hosting by grouping all customer areas into a single realm, ensuring that different utilities are not able to see each other’s private information.

The hosting process requires a PLC at each site to collect data that can be sent to the hosted SCADA application by the cellular modems. If a customer already has these devices in place, they are simply reused in the new system. If not, the utility is provided with a PLC that can communicate with its existing equipment.

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