Project: Baton Rouge Wastewater Pump Station SCADA System (June 13, 2006)

June 13, 2006

The engineering staff is working this week on OPC server redundancy issues and enabling SCADA write control now that security access levels have been established. Later this week we will again meet with the prime consultant and city maintenance personnel to conduct a second review and iron out issues related to configuration of alarms and reports.

Alarm notification within the existing SCADA system is presently configured such that critical station alarms are sent via text messaging to a shared cell phone. Operators can remotely acknowledge alarms. Alarm notifications are also sent when the alarms return to normal. Critical alarms are defined as station power failure or the failure of multiple pumps. A redundant third-party application including traditional voice dialer boards and telephone lines is employed in this scheme.

The prime consultant’s original plans were to duplicate what was used in the old SCADA system, using the same third-party application. The new SCADA system graphical software has an integrated ability to send e-mail messages. We are testing this to determine if messaging in this way can provide as reliable a notification system, which would represent a more integrated, simpler, lower maintenance solution.

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