Water and wastewater systems usually rely on telemetry, which is the monitoring (and usually control) of remote assets.
The terms telemetry and SCADA are often used within the water and wastewater industry interchangeably. Without going into great technical detail, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) refers to control and monitoring and may be for a local system (e.g. a treatment plant). Telemetry refers to the "remote" nature of the assets. Many older telemetry systems don't provide much control.
For a water supply network, there may be a SCADA system at the water treatment plant and a telemetry system for the network of Pump Stations and reservoirs that distribute the water to the community. For new systems and major upgrades, it is common to find that one SCADA platform becomes the interface for the entire network, with the telemetry portion simply being the radio or cellular communications network to the remote stations.
Implementing water telemetry reliably is a complex subject because communications must be reliable, and all of the logic for the water network has to take into account those times when communications are not functioning perfectly.
No communications system has 100% availability, with comms providers typically citing an "availability" figure, like 99.9%. The actual value varies greatly depending on location conditions, budget and the tolerance of the system to comms outages. There is no one right answer.
The other major challenge with the communications network is ensuring that data reporting and control commands are reliably reported. This can be a challenge, even with 100% uptime, because data collisions can occur in some networks.
Wastewater telemetry has some simpler aspects because comms between sites is typically less critical. There is frequently more data in the wastewater collection system than the water supply system - just as a consequence of the number of Pump Stations. Usually, the number of stations on the wastewater side is far higher than on the water side.
Find out more about the MultiSmart Pump Station Manager and how it integrates into telemetry systems.
