At Northern Ireland 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 (Master Station).

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 has committed to contracts and a project to replace 900 Telemetry Outstations over the next two years.

NI Water’s ICT Telemetry Function is delivering the project to replace all aged Telemetry outstations with Schneider Electric’s WITS DNP3 Talus T4e outstation. EMR are installing, configuring (on-site) and commissioning the T4e outstation in liaison with the Telemetry Outstation Project Team located at Bretland House, Belfast.

The project is proceeding to plan and thus far has successfully installed over 150 T4e WITS outstations. The outstations are sharing radio channels with existing legacy outstations, operating in a polled mode whereby the Master Station requests data from the outstations on a regular basis. NI Water’s Telemetry scanning radio network utilises 4RF’s Aprisa SR radio allowing dual protocol and dual baud rate on the same physical channel. The existing Proteus protocol outstations are polled at 2400 baud whereas the new T4e WITS outstations are polled at 9600 baud.

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. It will align and support both the ICT and ICAT (Instrumentation, Control, Automation, Telemetry) Strategies and the Future Organisation Model.

 

For more information contact Telemetry and SCADA Manager – Pearse Bradley (pearse.bradley@niwater.com) or Telemetry Outstation Project Manager – John Holterman (john.holterman@niwater.com) at NI Water.”