Upgrades to Lake County Public Water District SCADA system added redundancy, remote monitoring, and current PLC communications

1. Lake County Public Water District Grows With the Help
of B&W Control Systems Integration and InduSoft
Upgrades to Lake County Public Water District SCADA system added
redundancy, remote monitoring, and current PLC communications
• InduSoft Web Studio (IWS) made
upgrading from a system installed
almost 10 years prior extremely easy.
• InduSoft Web Studio proved to be
the ideal solution for the current
requirements and planned future
upgrades of the Lake County
Public Water District.
• The developer found IWS “very
intuitive, straightforward, and
everything proceeded with
a minimum of time spent in
additional development.”
Figure 1: Clear, informational and easy to use interface for pump house monitoring
Background B&W Control Systems Integration specializes in
Municipal water districts are integral aspects of the municipal clientele and does everything from facility
infrastructure of any city. Water and wastewater automation to water and wastewater SCADA and
treatment are absolutely vital for any city, and in remote SCADA applications. The Lake County water/
order to meet both state and federal regulations, water wastewater treatment SCADA application was built
treatment must be carefully monitored. From the using InduSoft Web Studio, and it presented B&W
water source to the tap, there is a complex process with an opportunity to work with new SCADA
that city water supplies must go through to maintain development software.
safety and reliability. Oversight of the process is an
important way to ensure that water supplies make it The Challenge
through the entire process while adhering to health The application monitors a water treatment plant that
and safety regulations and reliably providing water to services Zion, Illinois, among other nearby towns. The
a large number of residents. plant pumps in water from Lake Michigan. Low lift
The Lake County Public Water District, which serves pumps bring water into the plant, and then take it to
the City of Zion, the Village of Winthrop Harbor and the main water facility where it goes through three
the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (Illinois different clarifiers. During this stage of the process,
Beach State Park and North Point Marina) on a non-
profit basis, recently found their system in need of
an upgrade. B&W Control Systems Integration was
chosen for this large municipal project.

2. Continued from front page...
Figure 3: Discharge pressure and flow rates are shown as 24 hour
trends, and current values are displayed allowing operators to
make informed decisions.
Figure 2: Overview screens offer a real-time view of the process.
mixers, water levels, pumps, valves, and equipment plant active at all times. The upgrade required that B&W
failures are all monitored by the SCADA system. The incorporate a remote SCADA solution. An additional
clarifiers feed the water through four different filters. requirement for the project included adding redundancy
Here, the application monitors and records data such measure to ensure that the plant remained online in the
as water levels, pump and valve activity, the backwash event of a hardware failure.
process, and the time the water spends in each step of The current SCADA software used by Lake County was
the process. The water is fed into the clearwell where InduSoft Web Studio v4.0. The developer who worked on
three high service pumps move it into a large storage the project, Jim Gramhofer, was tasked with upgrading an
tank. The application keeps track of the water flow in unfamiliar SCADA system using a newer iteration of the
each stage of the process, and also monitors the main software, with new PLCs and additional tag requirements.
storage tanks.
The largest challenge of the project was the upgrade of The Solution
equipment. Lake County’s current architecture made The upgrade for The Lake County Public Water District
use of outdated PLCs with proprietary protocols. For was able to incorporate all the functionality of the original
the new system, Allen Bradley Control Logix PLCs system, and introduce the new features necessitated for the
were employed in a massive upgrade plant wide. This upgrade. B&W developer Jim Gramhofer said, “Upgrading
new upgrade would take the plant from producing the InduSoft application went perfectly. We only had to
4.5 million gallons of water per day to producing 6.5 install the new software, copy the data over and plug in the
million gallons per day. new information, and everything went off without a hitch.”
Another unique challenge of the project included the
need for remote process monitoring to help keep the The upgrade brought the application from version 4.0 of
InduSoft Web Studio to v7.0. InduSoft develops new versions

3. “
Upgrading the InduSoft the fact that the drivers required to connect with the
new Allen Bradley PLCs are native within the software.
application went perfectly. No additional modules or protocols needed to be
purchased to connect directly with the new hardware.
We only had to install the B&W added some redundancy features to the system
during the upgrade. Before, the InduSoft Web Studio
new software, copy the data based SCADA system resided on one server. The
new architecture includes two rack servers that act
over and plug in the new as a redundant pair. The licenses included with these
redundant servers also offered Lake County two
information, and everything
”
additional remote thin client viewers that clients can use
to connect to the system.
went off without a hitch. This web connectivity was a great addition to the
— Jim Gramhofer, B&W Developer
upgrade. With the thin client viewers, the plant
of the software with compatibility in mind, meaning that operators and supervisors can monitor the process
even applications developed in the first iteration of InduSoft from remote locations, such as offices or homes. This
Web Studio can still be developed in the newest version. This ensures that it’s easy to take the SCADA system with
allows plant owners to upgrade equipment such as PLCs and the personnel wherever they go, and helps ensure that
computers with the assurance that development time used alarms are addressed as soon as possible. This improves
to create the original application for the system is not lost. the safety and reliability of the system, and reduces
Integration can be performed easily for upgrades because the downtime in a critical municipal utility.
application will still be compatible with the new software.
One aspect of the upgrade that went especially well
Another benefit of using InduSoft for the upgrade was included the changing of tag names to include more
Figure 5: Clarifier status is monitored and displayed on a
representation of the physical layout. Effluent and influent valve
status, along with mixer RPMs are monitored closely.
Figure 4: The historian screen provides quick access to logged
values back to any time or date. Clicking on the trend
provides instant access to all the recorded values for that
period.

4. Figure 7: Filter Control, PID set points, and valve status are all
observed and adjusted from a convenient location, with real-time
feedback.
Figure 6: Clearwell levels, and set point are adjusted and monitored.
Clear layouts reduce operator errors.
descriptive titles. According to Gramhofer, “The old comes included with the software solution. Because
system tags were cryptic, and the ability to go in and InduSoft Web Studio can perform all the necessary
change tag names without disrupting anything was functions of a SCADA software and includes all
really useful. I haven’t seen this in any other SCADA the tools without requiring additional add-ons and
software solutions. modules, it’s the ideal solution for any SCADA
integration client with a fixed budget. The Lake
The Result County Public Water District intends to continue
The smooth transition between the upgrade process of using InduSoft Web Studio for future upgrades, and is
equipment and software went exceptionally smoothly. planning on upgrading to a higher tag count very soon
The project requirements were met with a minimum as they continue to modify their current architecture.
of time spent in additional development. Gramhofer,
who was new to developing in InduSoft Web Studio
said “It’s easy to work with InduSoft from the very
beginning, and very intuitive. The development was
straightforward, and even without the class, it’s easy to
pick up the software very quickly.”
A key point that B&W noted in working with
InduSoft Web Studio was the rich feature set that
For more information contact your local distributor or InduSoft directly at
info@indusoft.com or 877-INDUSOFT (877-463-8763) or 512-349-0334.
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