The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), a municipally owned utility, provides roughly four million residents in southeastern Michigan with an average of 710 million gallons of water per day. Its main wastewater treatment plant (WWTP)-among the largest single-site WWTPs in the United States-collects and treats residential, commercial and industrial wastewater for 76 municipal communities.
To enhance service, process and operational efficiency, and to meet the need for future expansion, DWSD initiated a multiphase, multimillion-dollar upgrade program encompassing its water distribution system, wastewater collection system and WWTP.
As part of this comprehensive program, a new department-wide Instrumentation, Control and Computer System (ICCS) was designed, assembled, tested and implemented. The contract called for training of more than 700 DWSD operators, maintenance technicians and engineers on the new ICCS, as well as maintenance for the system for a designated period of time.
The design and construction (Phase One) of a multiyear initiative to modernize the DWSD's vast water and wastewater treatment complexes with a control and SCADA solution has just been completed. This comprehensive automation and control solution helps DWSD improve operational efficiency, maintain regulatory and environmental compliance, and accommodate future system expansion. With this major undertaking now complete, the seven-year comprehensive systems maintenance portion (Phase Two) of the project has begun.
Upgrade Details
The ICCS upgrade project covers more than 1,000 square miles and includes the WWTP, five water treatment plants, 21 treated water booster pump stations, five high-lift pump stations, 10 wastewater pump stations, three Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) basins and more than 170 remote radio telemetry sites monitoring level, pressure and discharge.
The integrated control and SCADA solution included installation of a WWTP Plant Control Center (PCC) connected to six new Area Control Centers (ACC), as well as an overall System Control Center (SCC) that monitors and controls the entire water distribution system and wastewater collection system. The SCC features a 43 ft x 8 ft video display wall that provides geographic images of the entire service area, including all facilities, pump stations and critical sensors.
For each facility and monitoring location, system information-including water pressure, valve positions, pump and equipment status, rain data, sewer levels and flows-is collected and broadcast through the network. All the information received or generated by the system is stored in a high-capacity historian so that it can be used to plot trends, analyze events and project future operational requirements.
The network architecture features more than 40 integrated systems that monitor and control approximately 30,000 I/O points.
Results
Replacing outdated controls with the state-of-the-art system offers DWSD a number of significant benefits, including better management of distributed systems and remote sites, streamlined environmental reporting, improved water/wastewater process control reliability and reduced operations and maintenance costs. For example, because operators at the water distribution and wastewater collection systems now have access to real-time data from throughout the system, they are able to more quickly detect and isolate system leaks as well as better react to rapidly changing conditions such as storm water inflow.
The DWSD System Control Center with relay control logic prior to modernization.
"The Ovation control system provides DWSD with a capability we did not have before-to access and analyze data on a department-wide basis," said PJ Dada, assistant director of DWSD. "The value of the information available to us through the Ovation control system has streamlined our regulatory reporting, makes it easier to quickly respond to disruptions and enables us to provide accurate and timely information to our customers, which translates into improved overall efficiency."
The DWSD System Control Center (SCC) with new digital control system. The SCC monitors and controls the entire water distribution system and wastewater collection system. Pictured above in the SCC is PJ Dada, assistant director of DWSD.
The control solution offers an integrated control architecture that improves the economics of water and wastewater organizations by delivering greater insight into plant processes, assets and overall operations for enhanced operational flexibility, reliability and efficiency. Water and wastewater treatment facilities around the globe rely on control systems like these to meet the challenges associated with aging infrastructures and population growth; comply with stringent environmental regulations; manage widespread, multiple-plant operations from a central operations center; realize performance efficiencies; and attain significant, long-term maintenance cost savings.
The System Control Center (SCC) monitors and controls the entire water distribution system and wastewater collection system. For each facility and monitoring location, system information-including water pressure, valve positions, pump and equipment status, rain data, sewer levels and flows-is collected and broadcast through the network.
The DWSD System Control Center (SCC) features a 43 ft x 8 ft video display wall that provides geographic images of the entire service area, including all facilities, pump stations and critical sensors.
DWSD supervisor places pump into remote control mode at the Conner Creek CSO Control Facility.
Computer room at the DWSD System Control Center
The Water Works Park Water Treatment Plant is one of the five water treatment plants controlled as part of DWSD's Integrated Control & Computer System (ICCS).
Pumps & Systems, January 2010