Aladema Water District

In the Beginning...

The District's ONSPEC SCADA system and old PLC hardware had been operating for over 21 years. Their system was running fine, but they knew it was time to upgrade because integrating ONSPEC with new hardware and finding development support was difficult. They also wanted mobile access, which wasn’t supported by the current technology. The District's leadership knew they needed a modern and secure system that would run smoothly for the next 20-30 years. The proposed solution was to use Ignition for leapfrogging into the future, Perspective for building High Performance graphics that can be opened in any screen, Canary as a powerful historian which will give them valuable insights, and Kepware as an intermediary until the PLC system is upgraded..

The Plot Thickens

The District first ran a feasibility study and then hired Vertech to implement a pilot project. The development team was presented with over a dozen rigorous requirements, including the need to maintain 100% uptime and reporting during the development, testing, and implementation.

We chose to upgrade the SCADA first, so the existing PLCs would need to work with both the old SCADA and the new until they could upgrade the PLC hardware. Their operators were also used to working in very specific ways. Finally, they were also updating their network at the same time, requiring collaboration with their other technology teams.

The Happy Ending

Through workshops with the operators, we found ways to incorporate new, modern SCADA screens into their current ways of working while enhancing their existing processes. New tag and graphics templates were developed which were compatible with both the old and new systems. We processed over 2 billion rows of data to bring their 21 years of historical reporting into the new, modular enterprise system. Finally, we provided multiple training sessions tailored to different departments along with robust user and development documentation so that every operator felt comfortable with the new screens.

Now with Ignition, The District has a modern solution built on scalable technology that can be rolled out to all of their sites and supports future PLC upgrades.

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System Overview

This screen efficiently displays useful and readable information for the entire facility and showcases how leveraging popups and templates makes it easy to allow for control of devices no matter how the operator is viewing their process. Sparkline components provide a glanceable historical view into important chemical readouts and tank levels, while dynamic alarm graphics allow operators to quickly identify problems. Additionally, template popups launched from any of the device indicator graphics allow for access to controls from any status screen.

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Pop-up windows

Templatized popups with easy access to device controls help operators manually actuate equipment from any screen while keeping primary displays clean and easy to read. Popups also provide quick trends for operators to quickly view history on a tab without launching a full Axiom trending session.

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Events History

Tracking operations were very important to the customer. Most of their process is executed by operators directly controlling devices from the SCADA, so they needed a way to keep track of who changed what and how it correlated with their residuals data and alarms. We created custom tools to track their tag events and provided a database display allowing the customer to search and sort operations events for reporting and process tracking.

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Sodium Hydroxide Screen

This primary chemical screen provides a view of one part of the blending process. The traditional PID layout gives a view of the equipment connections in the field, while modern SCADA display components allow for glanceable device statuses and sparkline tag history displays. The screen is kept clean and is clearly laid out so that operators know exactly where to look for their information, and any abnormal process readouts quickly stand out.

High-Performance Graphics

The high-performance HMI graphics make information more readable, especially the sparkline displays, which allow for important process variables to be shown at a glance. These space-efficient displays give the operators easy access to key information.

Better Situational Awareness

Accessibility has improved because they can now access the screens from a web browser from any location and any device in their network. Because of how the system is designed, future development can easily incorporate more calculations, graphs and other data visualization.

Contextual Clues

The new SCADA system gives the operators better context. The sparklinks show trending data for the last 15 minutes… especially directionally. So, for example, they can tell not just that “the tank level is 10” but whether it is filling up or emptying.

Navigation Ease (UX)

The screens are less cluttered and operators can get anywhere in two clicks; the third click is the action they would take.

Prioritized Alarms

Before, they had a “flooding of alarms.” This meant that any major problem meant operators had to scroll through screens to determine which alarm was the root cause and which was a symptom of the problem. Now, alarms can be quickly interpreted and acted upon.

Security and Accessibility

Operators now have access to data without causing damage intentionally or unintentionally to the broader system.

CASE STUDY

Alameda County Water

Modern and Scalable SCADA

ROLLING 21 YEARS OF DATA INTO AN ENTERPRISE-READY SOLUTION

The Protagonist

The Story