Everyone relies on water coming out their faucet when they turn the knob, whether it is a small town or a large municipality. The municipalities must maintain constant vigilance on the local water tower to keep the water flowing. Water towers hold enough water for the residents for a minimum of one day. The water within the tower is constantly moving from a state of almost empty to full. The water runs from the tank when demand is high and fills up when demand is low. This water cycling allows the municipalities to provide enough pressure to keep the water flowing through the system. When the water level gets low, the pumps start to keep the water at the required levels. You may ask yourself; how do the municipalities know when to turn the pump on and how is this maintained?
Larger municipalities have expensive SCADA systems to maintain all the equipment throughout the city and in remote locations. These SCADA systems are costly, so smaller cities cannot afford to automate their operations. ReignRMC provides solutions specifically designed with these smaller towns in mind. Read our story on how we helped one small town water department simplify operations by adding cellular technology to monitor and control their systems, giving them insight into the city water and increasing staff productivity.
The Problem for One Town in Alabama
ReignRMC recently worked with a small town in Alabama seeking to improve operations within the city and give constant visibility to its supported water system. The town has two water towers, and they utilize a three-pump configuration to maintain the water levels between the two towers. The outdated fiber optic SCADA had become useless and quotes to update or replace it soared into the 6 figures. To make matters worse, the operations staff had to manually visit the towers everyday to check the levels and then run around town turning pumps on and off. Overtime was through the roof and the staff was not able to get much else done.
The Solution
When Reign heard about the problem, they immediately proposed their cellular pump control system. Cellular communication eliminates much of the cost associated with fiber systems and brings the same functionality. The purpose of the monitoring system was to, first and foremost, manage the cycle times between the three pumps and record the total runtimes for each of the pumps. The city must provide monthly reports of pump runtimes, which is considered critical information for them.
The Outcome
For a fraction of the cost, the ReignRMC installation provided the town with a completely automated pump management system. Instead of utilizing maintenance staff to control the pump manually, the system automatically controls the pumps. The new monitoring system allows them to level the amount of runtime for each pump and keep constant pressure on the system. In addition, the once manual tracking of the runtime for each pump is automatic, and the information can be provided to authorities at any time, especially for the once-a-month reporting.
The system includes a customized dashboard where authorized personnel can review the entire city from their phone, tablet, or PC at any time. The dashboard also allows starting and stopping pumps remotely, which was only possible by manually switching before.
Benefits:
The operations of the water department for this small town in Alabama have improved four times over. The two water towers are now perfectly synced, and the pressure is maintained at the appropriate level.
Because of the price point for the ReignRMC monitoring system, the small town gained additional benefits from adding monitoring to their lift stations and aerators. The small-town municipality can now optimize its operations by constantly monitoring the runtime and status of all the pumps within its support area.
