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 Desalination plant (10MGD), and National City Wells.
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. They hired Enterprise Automation as the sole integrator to ensure the resultant control system would be reliable and consistent. 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 water quality reporting, SCADA server virtualization and redundancy, emergency operations center.
From the beginning, EA and the Authority prioritized establishing design standards for control panels, programming, user interfaces, and reporting. EA helped the Authority build those requirements into each project. After 10 years of phased upgrades, the water treatment control system reads and behaved as if it were built in a single project.
That control system consistency has provided substantial operational benefits: simplified spares inventory, improved accessibility of information, and comprehensive operator training that enables in-house troubleshooting across process areas. Real-time visibility into chemical usage and improved water modeling accuracy have reduced response times and decreased downtime. Together with the documented operations resources (full process specifications, as-builts for all 15 control panels, and operator training manuals for every process), these standards support reliable plant operations, easier maintenance, and more effective long-term planning.
The consistency has provided substantial benefit to plant operations. It has resulted in the simplification of spares inventory, accessibility of information and training for potential troubleshooting, improved water modeling accuracy, real-time visibility of chemical usage, and less downtime.
