Radio Communication System for Raw Water Pumping Station

completed

This project will purchase and install a radio communication system to eliminate the possibility of malfunction of the leased line modem connection. This will ensure the safe operation of the plant and will reduce operating costs by eliminating the ongoing cost of a leased telephone line. A recent malfunction required the operators to monitor the Water Treatment Plant 24/7 for 2 weeks until repairs could be made and also required the manual making of water. This was very time consuming and created many inefficiencies. Improved environmental outcome: With the communications failure we recently experienced, we had to run the plant and the raw water station manually which is the least energy efficient way of doing it. It means we have to manually throttle pumps and filter trains decreasing efficiency, and in the case of the raw water station to run the pumps manually we had to run them without Variable Frequency Drive (VFDs), which means they are running at 100% output and using the most energy. This project could eliminate these problems.