Remote access for water and wastewater applications

A clean supply of water is vital to human health. The demand for water is starting to outpace supply, with the impact of quantity and quality of water affected by climate change and environmental degradation. Furthermore, the need to treat wastewater is now even more prevalent to ensure society has clean, healthy, drinkable water on demand.

Water suppliers face constant challenges in providing clean water and removing waste water on demand. Constant maintenance and upgrading ensure leaks are fixed, water is safe for consumption and blockages are avoided. Using SCADA, water suppliers can view isolated and unmanned sites holistically at local and regional levels.

The treatment of water is a very complex process. In these plants, there are usually many PLCs, which each extract data from a complex web of instruments connected by a network of switches. This data is then fed back to a central site and monitored by SCADA. If one of the many processes fails, or the water does not meet the standard, the plant can cut off supply for customers. Whilst this pre-emptive measure is in place to protect customers, if water is not flowing, the supplier will be fined. Ensuring that the method of processing water is consistent with strict water standards can only be achieved with close monitoring of all equipment on site.

With Serial, Copper Ethernet and Fibre interfaces, Merlin's range provides connection neutrality, making it easy to connect to new and existing systems. Therefore, water suppliers can monitor and oversee the process using PLCs that typically have either Ethernet or Serial (RS232/RS485) interfaces. 

Interconnectivity between local and regional sites via cellular communication ensures that decisions can be made in advance. Such an instance could be a shortage of rainfall during a certain month may require the water supplier to divert water from local reservoirs in order to meet demand.