Water & Wastewater

Most farms are not equipped to manage major software systems. The use of a
lightweight cloud-based solution with mobile capabilities was an absolute
eye-opener and has enabled many farms to join the digital revolution
and seize IIoT opportunities.

Background

Water wastage is a costly issue that has no place in a sustainable world. Farms need a lot of water and so reducing wastage is a sure way to achieve major savings. WaterForce specialises in irrigation systems and offers innovative solutions that enable farmers to operate and monitor their sprinklers remotely by checking sensor data and making well-founded decisions based on the data. WaterForce’s solutions have been enriched with AVEVA Select software to enable farmers, especially in countries as large as New Zealand, where distances are often far greater than here in the Netherlands, to save time, water and money.

Effective water management because information management, analyses and automation are now taken care of perfectly
with AVEVA Select.

Goals

  • Monitor and manage important irrigation systems remotely for greater operational efficiency, more efficient water and energy consumption and better compliance with legal requirements.

  • Optimise existing equipment and use cloud and IIoT technology to offer a real-time up-to-date overall view of the important irrigation systems.

Challenges

  • WaterForce was looking for a
    technology partner who wanted to help develop and supply a scalable, reliable and future-proof IIoT solution with all the trimmings. A partner with knowledge of communication options, operating systems and analysis.

  • Irrigation pumps and
    centre-pivot irrigation systems are located in remote places, meaning that the cloud platform may be plagued by reception issues and data delays.

Results

  • Improved insight into the performance and status of irrigation systems, both for farmers and for WaterForce.

  • More efficient and effective water usage, with farmers reporting savings of as much as 50% on their energy bills after the first season.

  • The remote monitoring saves the farmers a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted on driving out to remote places to inspect equipment.

  • WaterForce can now offer extra
    value-added services, such as error diagnostics and performance
    benchmarking.

“AVEVA Select software lets us access all our installations in
real time. Because of this, we only require one person
to control the operation of all of the 568 plants,
regardless of location”

-Antonio Palacios Higueras, Technical Services Manager

Total Picture of Power Production

AVEVA Select System Platform is the delivery mechanism for enterprise control, and consists of the components necessary to provide a true aggregated view of information across an organization, enabling a robust foundation for collaboration between people, processes and systems. System Platform provides a single, scalable software solution for all the SCADA, supervisory HMI and MES needs for monitoring 9REN’s renewable power-generating installations. System Platform also provides a simple upgrade path for easily adding new software and hardware to the system from any third-party vendor. By including an industrialized application server, a powerful historian server and an easy-to-use information server, System Platform easily tackles demanding, precision-driven real-time power generation activities.

A side benefit of System Platform was its ability to help power plant managers achieve higher levels of consistency and quality across its entire “grid” of photovoltaic and wind installations. Employing five servers, System Platform controls all of 9REN’s installations. Two servers act as redundant object servers with one controlling the plants in Spain and the other controlling operations in Italy. A third server is for historic information and operates the historian database. The historian is a high-performance real-time database for power generation information and is designed to collect a wide variety of plant data, at full resolution and very high data rates. Delivery of this vital information ensures that decision-makers at all levels have the information needed to take steps needed to ensure maximum operational efficiency. Another server provides visualization via AVEVA Select InTouch HMI. InTouch empowers 9REN to quickly and easily develop custom graphical views of its real-time power generation processes. As an open and extensible HMI with high-end graphical capabilities, the software provides the power and flexibility needed for advanced application design with connectivity to a broad range of systems and devices.

With the help of AVEVA Select, the EOSystem has delivered tangible benefits for 9REN. For example, while the 6-megawatt photovoltaic plant in Bella, Italy generates electrical power, the EOSystem transmits valuable information via satellite to 9REN’s Madrid office. The plant, located in southern Italy near Rome, consists of an extensive array of 30,000 solar panels with 12 inverters to convert the DC-generated solar panel electricity into the AC power required to run homes and businesses. The solar power facility has extensive monitoring tools to measure generated energy in real time and stations to record local weather conditions, enabling managers to anticipate reduced power generation due to cloudy or inclement weather.

The System Platform enables EOSystem to provide effective collaboration tools that enable standardization, reduced engineering time and cost savings.

“The System Platform lets us access all our installations in real time,” said Antonio Palacios Higueras, services technical manager for 9REN. “Because of this, we only require one person to control the operation of all of the 568 plants, regardless of location. We also have achieved a significant cost reduction in time per designer and project.”