Server Infrastructure
Sweetwater Authority
Customer Background
Since 1977, Sweetwater Authority has provided safe and reliable water service to 200,000 residents over 32 square miles near San Diego, California. It is a publicly owned water agency governed by an elected Board of Directors. The Authority has three sources: freshwater ground wells, the Sweetwater reservoir, and San Diego Formation wells which provide brackish groundwater. The Authority operates three facilities: Perdue Treatment Plant (30MGD conventional), GW Desalinization plant (10MGD), and National City Wells.
Project Background
In 2004 the Authority initiated a master plan for long-term development of the processes and infrastructure at the Perdue treatment plant to comply with forthcoming water quality regulations and capacity requirements. Enterprise Automation was hired as the sole integrator to ensure a reliable and consistent control system would result. From 2005-2015 the Authority’s plant upgrades included: chemical systems, Raw Water Pump Station retrofit, Filtration retrofit, conversion to Dissolved Air Flotation, plant network upgrade to fiber optics, Dam Valve retrofit, automated WQ reporting, SCADA server virtualization and redundancy, emergency operations center, among others.
EA Solutions
From the very beginning, EA and the Authority prioritized establishing design standards for control panels, programming, user interfaces, and reporting. To bring these standards to life, EA helped the Authority build requirements into each project. Today, after 10 years of phased upgrades, the control system, from instrument to database, appears as if it was built in a single project.
The consistency has provided substantial benefit to plant operations: simplification of spares inventory, operators have the information and training to perform a majority of troubleshooting, water modeling accuracy has improved, chemical usage can be seen in real-time, far less downtime.
Key Insights
- Control system consistency improves operations—less downtime, simplified training, & increased in house troubleshooting skill
- Control system standards built into project requirements
Key Technologies:
- Schneider Electric PLC w/Advantys IO
- CitectSCADA HMI
- VMware virtualization
- Water model with Ampla MES
Operations Resources:
- Full process specifications for plant
- As-builts for all 15 control panels
- Control system operator training manual for every process area
