Northern Ireland Water

Telemetry Outstation Project

NI Water Telemetry provides monitoring (and in some cases control) of approximately 4,500 clean and wastewater assets. Telemetry not only provides alarm annunciation, local monitoring and control but also provides regulatory and operational data. There is a reliance on accurate and timely data being provided for business, operational purposes and for the security of customer water and wastewater facilities.

At each asset, signals are marshalled into a local Telemetry outstation e.g. pump status, valve status, levels, flows etc. The Telemetry outstation communicates these signals via radio, GSM or PSTN to the central Regional Telemetry System.

Some of the existing Telemetry outstations at these assets are more than 10 years old and have come to the end of their operational life.

NI Water’s ICT Telemetry is delivering a project to replace all aged Telemetry outstations with Schneider Electric’s WITS DNP3 Talus T4e outstation. The Telemetry Outstation Project Team based at the Telemetry Development Centre, Bretland House, Belfast are responsible for planning and coordinating the rollout with the contractors and other stakeholder groups.

Schneider Electric are supplying the Talus T4e Telemetry outstation which communicates to the Regional Telemetry System using the Water Industry Telemetry Standard (WITS) DNP3 protocol.
EMR are installing and commissioning the T4e outstation in liaison with the Telemetry Outstation Project Team at Bretland House.

Phase 1 (2 years) of the Telemetry Outstation project has been successfully completed with 900 of the oldest outstations replaced in May 2017.
As part of their commitment to maintaining the system, the NI Water Executive Committee, NI Water Board, Department for Infrastructure and Department of Finance approved Phase 2 of the project with a budget of £9m to replace the remaining 2100 Telemetry Outstations over the next 5 years.

Delivery of the Telemetry Outstation Project shall maintain a robust Telemetry infrastructure both for now and the future. It will ensure that NI Water is employing best practice using the Water Industry Telemetry Standard protocol for Telemetry outstations (WITS DNP3) and deliver a standard Telemetry configuration for NI Water’s assets.