SCADA Integrations is a full-service firm of 8 delivering SCADA solutions throughout Southern California, beginning with SCADA system design, to PLC panel construction, to Enterprise level SCADA Operating System implementation, development, and maintenance, and to all aspects of SCADA hardware installation, programming, and system maintenance.
Fallbrook Public Utility District (FPUD) operates as a public agency under the Public Utility District Act of the State of California. FPUD was incorporated as a political subdivision of the State of California in 1922. The District was originally formed to provide water to the community of Fallbrook. Since then, the District has expanded its services and treats sewage and provides recycled water. FPUD imports water from the Colorado River and the State Water Project. The imported water is delivered by the San Diego County Water Authority, which is the largest single customer of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. All of the potable water distributed by FPUD is treated at the Lake Skinner Filtration plant, just east of Temecula. The treated water quality surpasses all federal, state, and local water quality standards and regulations. FPUD delivers water to some 35,000 people over a 28,000 square acre service area.
SCADA Integrations has been providing support to the FPUD since 2016. In June of 2017 the district requested that we provide programming for a configurable alarm dialer system within the existing ClearSCADA database for their Potable Water system. The district’s in-house technician had a clear concept on what they were looking for. The requirements were to have a user based weekly schedule for alarm notification (similar to what is provided in WIN-911 or SCADADroid applications). There was to be a runtime configurable ‘call list’ for each day of the week that would check against the users’ availability and notify of alarms down the list for the current day of the week. FPUD uses the email alarm redirect capability to send emails that are converted to SMS messages to the operator’s duty mobile phones. The following is similar to what was provided as an explanatory example by FPUD (each field was to be runtime configurable without entering design mode by a logged in operator/admin):
With SCADA Integrations’ expertise in WIN-911 configurations and other user-based alarm notification methods there was a great deal of confidence approaching this project. However, after a preliminary review of the alarm redirection properties in ‘out-of-the-box’ ClearSCADA it was revealed that the alarm redirect was focused on individual object properties (or those of their templates) and not necessarily on a system-wide user or schedule based approach. Due to the size of the Potable Water system database, directly referencing and editing each object’s alarm redirect properties was not feasible.
At this point SCADA Integrations began to design an approach that would work with the extensive ClearSCADA features and capabilities. The initial concept was to, of course, address the FPUD requests and to do it in such a way that it would be repeatable between systems. Some of the elements used in the design were less commonly used in other applications so we began to get in touch with various tech support groups and got feedback initially that what we were endeavoring to do was going to be a bit… of an adventure.
Thankfully we were able to get in contact with Sage Designs and review the conceptual design and demonstrate the elements that were put together at that point. They put us in touch with resources within Schneider Electric Telemetry & Remote SCADA Solutions (TRSS) which provided key support that connected the backend components into a presentable interface.
Shortly after this support was provided, the project swiftly came to completion. FPUD was quite pleased with the results and SCADA Integrations was impressed with the ‘under-the-hood’ capabilities that this project demonstrated. A side benefit to the integration of this alarm dialer system is the importance of the core database structure was demonstrated. As stated the design approach was to create a modular application that was repeatable to other systems. This was put to the test as the final testing was taking place on the Potable Water system, they asked what it would take to add this functionality to their Collections system. It was nearly a drag-and-drop. In total, this project was a huge success. It went from a hypothetical concept that ‘should work’ to finding out that ClearSCADA elements that did not originally appear to work together in fact could, and finally to a finished product that matched SCADA Integrations’ vision and exceeded customer expectations.
This success came from a number of key factors:
Educated End User: The FPUD instrumentation and controls specialist has received ClearSCADA training and has actively developed within it for their system. The benefit to this cannot be overstated. When customer and integrator have commonality in scope and terminology it creates a positive development environment.
Engaged Representative: When the scope of what we were attempting to produce exceeded the scope of basic technical support, Sage Designs was contacted. They reviewed the conceptual design that we were going for and the portions that we had completed to that point. It was clear that what we were doing was possible, but involved. It was not long until we were in touch with the resources that led to the cleanliness of the resulting product. During the process and afterwards, Sage Designs checked in and followed up to ensure that we were receiving the support that we needed.
Capability of ClearSCADA: As the approach we were taking with the alarm redirections in a user based scheduled alarm notification did not have readily available resources, the granularity of ClearSCADA was a perceived hurdle.
However, because of this it was obvious that ClearSCADA was capable of doing anything we wanted to. We realized through developing this package that ClearSCADA is incredibly capable and has the resources to bring any project from concept to a functional reality.
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