Western Virginia Water Authority Western Virginia Water Authority (WVWA) has chosen AU2MATION to provide a solution to support remote monitoring of their sewer network. “We needed a solution that would provide us real-time notification of potential flooding during storm events. The solution needed to be easy to deploy and required minimal support and maintenance.” said Jim O’Dowd, Infrastructure Asset Manager at WVWA.

The solution utilizes a cloud-based “SCADA as a service” (SaaS) called Palette, from UK company Metasphere. The benefits of SaaS for WVWA are substantial:

• A third party performs configuration, monitoring, backup, and other system management activities.
• The shared infrastructure - the computer servers and software that run the SCADA – greatly reduces the cost to WVWA and other users.
• The fixed annual costs covering all aspects of the service, which limits chances for equipment breakdown and replacement, help with the Authority’s budgeting and planning.
• No special software is required to access the system and its data.

The Point Orange RTUs, also from Metasphere, deployed on each site were battery powered and included a built-in cellular modem. A simple pressure sensor is used to provide a low-cost, reliable report of sewer depth. The solution provides many benefits to WVWA. According to Jim O’Dowd: “The availability of real-time site-status data has reduced the need for routine visits, which saves on fuel costs and vehicle wear and tear, as well as reducing operator exposure to site and travel risks. Staff members now have the time to be more proactive in their activities, providing a better service to their customers. Instead of visiting all sites each day to perform routine tasks such as recording data, operators can spend their time on preventive maintenance and process optimization such as identifying factors contributing to flooding. Outside storm events, we can now analyze performance of the sewer network and identify potential improvements to alleviate future situations.”