Long Beach Water Department

AVEVA Select’s Information Server, ActiveFactory and AVEVA Select Historian are used for engineering and development applications throughout the municipal water district. “Installing AVEVA Select’s open system has enabled LBWD to not only improve efficiencies but continually lay the groundwork for future increases in the effectiveness of the city’s groundwater and sewage treatment systems,” said Ray Gonzales, the Long Beach Water Department’s telecommunications manager. “Supporting a large city such as Long Beach requires the accurate monitoring and control of all our facilities, and AVEVA Select’s solutions provided the right tools to help us accomplish this.” The SCADA configuration for the district’s water system is complex and gathers information from nearly 30,000 different data points via RTU sites and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) at 85 major equipment sites. The system is PC-based and uses the Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system with AVEVA Select’s InTouch humanmachine interface (HMI) software, which provides real-time visualization capabilities to monitor and control different sites.

The Long Beach Water Department programmed its PLC processor to poll the 40 remote sites throughout the water system an average of once every minute to ensure efficient operations. The data is stored in a AVEVA Select Historian. It combines the power and flexibility of a relational database with the speed and compression of a real-time system, enabling the water department’s main office to have simultaneous access to multiple data inputs from pumps, valves and equipment throughout the city. The AVEVA Select Historian provides operators with a complete picture of the city’s water system processes at any given time, thereby improving overall performance. With this level of visibility, subtle water treatment process inefficiencies and any water-quality problems can be corrected immediately. Additional data critical to operations, such as where a leak on a pipeline has occurred, can be transferred back to the central site in real time.

By alerting the primary station that the leak has occurred, operators can then perform necessary analysis and control activities. For instance, they can determine if the leak is critical and then share a description of the leak in a logical and organized fashion using the Information Server software. With accurate information in view, operators can increase response time by remotely turning pumps on or off or adjusting valves without having to waste time sending staff to the specific location to fix the problem. The ability to remotely control equipment also is very important to the water department as it enables the district to adjust water pressure in emergency situations. This may include pumping water to an area where there’s a fire or increasing water pressure to hillsides for improved water availability. In addition, collecting information from RTUs in real time enables the department to more easily monitor field equipment and perform critical system maintenance. The data can be analyzed to predict system problems. For example, staff can proactively replace potentially defective pumps or valves before they actually create trouble. The control-room operators and engineers in the water district’s treatment plant also use AVEVA Select’s ActiveFactory trending and analysis software to generate daily reports. The ActiveFactory software maximizes the value of the data stored in the water department’s AVEVA Select Historian. Users can generate reports directly from the operator’s InTouch HMI screen or feed data into a program such as Microsoft Excel to analyze trends in the chemical and groundwater treatment processes. “Trending and analysis are critical components of our water operations program because they help us to make informed decisions to ensure proper water-quality levels,” Gonzales said. “The ability to troubleshoot potential problems and view real-time and historical process data makes the AVEVA Select Historian and ActiveFactory software invaluable tools for LBWD’s overall operations.” As a key component of AVEVA Select’s modular and sustainable SCADA software solution, ActiveFactory software can disseminate information across a network, corporate intranet or the Internet.

By supplying real-time plant information to anyone in the enterprise who needs it, ActiveFactory clients, in conjunction with other AVEVA Select SCADA software tools, facilitate improved plant operations and performance. LBWD also uses AVEVA Select InTouch HMI for its groundwater treatment facility. As the largest groundwater treatment plant in the U.S., the department’s facility is considered one of the most modern plants in the world. The Long Beach Water Department’s distributed control system links nearly 1,500 data points from eight separate RTUs. The removal of sanitary sewage from Long Beach residences and businesses is as crucial to the city’s quality of life as its supply of drinking water. To efficiently manage and control its sanitary sewer and storm drains, the water department uses AVEVA Select’s InTouch HMI to support its operator interfaces. The control system consists of two PCs and one data collection server that poll the department’s 50 remote sites an average of once every minute each day. Through continuous monitoring of the city’s sewer and storm drains, department operators can determine if pumping stations need to reroute water along different mains.