Application Note: Water Treatment SCADA Upgrade
March 28, 2022Abstract
A water treatment company in north-central PA had an 11 year old Foxboro PAC control system (Schneider Electric’s Eurotherm company made these controllers for Foxboro). The municipality has two treatment facilities about three miles apart, connected via Fiber and using Profibus communication protocol. Approximately 2010, Foxboro did a large upgrade and installed two T940 controllers (one at each facility) with three 2500 series I/O racks at one facility and two at the other – approximately 350 I/O points. There was also a pair of radios bringing in a single tank level at one facility.
Problem
Unfortunately, two major problems occurred — the tank radio had taken a close proximity lightning hit and been destroyed, and Foxboro no longer supported the PAC series due to obsolescence. The company had been quoted $350K to replace the entire system with new technology, and were challenged by the steep price.
Solution
At the end of the project, the customer had a working, updated system that was easier to support, and estimated that they paid $150K for the total system, instead of the approximately $350k that they would have had to pay with a Rockwell Allen-Bradley solution, which would have required replacing all of the controllers, writing new code, and doing new panels.
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