Very large area SCADA for water supply
Ian Wiese
Principal SCADA Planning Officer,
Western Australian Water Corporation
629 Newcastle Street, Leederville,
Western Australia, Australia, 6007
Telephone: +61 8 9420 2610,
Fax: +61 8 9420 2915
E-mail: ian.wiese@watercorporation.com.au
Dr Stephen Beckwith
Senior SCADA Engineer, A.L. Haime and Associates Pty Ltd
6/47 Cambridge Street, West Leederville,
Western Australia, Australia, 6007
Telephone: +61 8 9420 3740,
Fax: +61 8 9420 2915
E-mail: stephen.beckwith@watercorporation.com.au
Introduction
The Western Australian Government established the Water Corporation of Western Australia
(WCWA) as a commercial enterprise in January 1996, as part of a program designed to
improve the competitiveness of a number of public utilities in Western Australia. The
WCWA moved quickly to adopt modern Information Technology (IT) systems extensively
for the benefit of the organisation. They have recently installed SAP/R3 as the Management
Information System, implemented a sophisticated customer billing system, adopted
geographic information system technology and have replaced a mainframe computer
infrastructure with PCs connected via a Wide Area Network (WAN) extending across the
state to all manned locations.
On the engineering side of the organisation, treatment plants are becoming more
sophisticated due to increasingly stringent regulatory requirements. Modern distributed
control systems (DCSs) are being used in all but very simple treatment applications to control
and optimise the process whilst providing product quality information to regulatory
authorities. In many respects, the WCWA's use of technology in the Perth Metropolitan area
is similar to that in similar sized cities around the world.
The deployment of SCADA and DCS systems has been extended to cover smaller water
distribution systems and waste water collection systems throughout the state. The WCWA
has been proactive in installing standalone supervisory control and data acquisition
(SCADA) systems that provide control functionality and alarms at these sites which in many
cases are very remote. These systems were often used to solve single problems such as
reducing power cost, or improving control of a particularly complex operation. The
installation of SCADA has subsequently been seen as a means to satisfy a variety of
increasing pressures such as consumer demands, regulatory requirements, and to also satisfy
the need to reduce operational costs. Consequently, the WCWA is embarking upon a
program of widespread installation of SCADA systems to control and monitor all smaller
systems.
An important challenge to the commercial success of the organisation is to harness the data
collection power of the SCADA and DCS systems to provide a wealth of operational
information to all levels of the organisation. Past systems that have been installed throughout
the state have failed to meet expectations regarding data availability. This has primarily been
attributed to difficulties associated with merging traditional engineering and new IT
methodology, and a lack of system openness in data interconnectivity and communications.
The Corporation has recognized the need to more closely link SCADA and DCS systems
with Corporate Management Information Systems (MIS) to improve the utilization of
information from SCADA systems throughout the organization. To achieve this, the WCWA
had to settle upon a standard SCADA and DCS architecture that would allow such data
transfer. This architecture had to be compatible with current market trends, meet the
particular needs of remote control systems and not lock the WCWA into a single SCADA
technology. This approach has since spawned the concept of a centralized integrated SCADA
system and has unearthed a wealth of opportunities for enhancing the operational structure of
the WCWA. The entire project, including the roll out of SCADA and the integration of such
systems with the Corporate IT system, has been named the Integrated Information
Monitoring and Control (IIMAC) system project.
