Mobicon MT-151 HMI controls the work of the pumping station

In 2014, the Municipal Water Supply and Sewerage Company (MPWiK) in Lębork, Poland, considered changing the method of remote communication between the dispatching center and more than twenty pumping stations. This was connected with the planned modernization of the Local Sewage Pumping Stations.

Up to now, information on pump status and signaling alarm from pumping station has been sent using radio modems operating in the UHF band, independently of the control system. The PLC controller was applied in the data exchange between objects and the SCADA system used to visualize the network of Local Sewage Pumping Stations. The task of PLC was to collect data from radio modems and transfer the received information to the server via the serial interface.

The quality of communication or its maintenance at all is strongly influenced by atmospheric conditions and environmental factors (change of tree stand, change of city development). While at some pumping stations communication in the UHF band functions without any problems up to now, on other, more distant and/or worse located, the quality of communication has dropped significantly, communication fails appeared or communication has been even stopped. The decrease in the quality of communication caused definitely more frequent trips of maintenance staff to such objects, and thus increased the costs of their operation.

When looking for an alternative to the existing solution, it was decided to use the Inventia Mobicon 151HMI module combining the advantages of the PLC and the 2G/3G communication module. It allows for free programming of the pumping station and its rich resource of inputs and outputs allow you to connect all signals. Two serial ports (RS-232 and RS-232/485) and an Ethernet port allow communication between the module and devices supporting open protocols Modbus RTU, Modbus ASCII, Modbus TCP/IP, or M-bus.

The built-in 2G/3G modem allows you to send statuses and alarms from objects to the server. Free configuration software and OPC server enable the integration of modules into existing SCADA visualization system.

Using MTDataProvider, which was made available free of charge by Inventia, in 2015 the MPWiK modernized three local sewage pumping stations by its own forces. Currently, eleven pumping stations belonging to MPWiK Lębork from a total number of 25 were modernized in the same way. We are at the stage of modernization of the next six control panels with Inventia modules – commissioning is planned for the beginning of 2019. Ultimately, the expansion of the sewage system is assumed, which will additionally increase the number of operated Local Sewage Pumping Stations to over thirty. Due to the failure-free operation of the system, by 2020 a total unification of the telemetry system in the company is planned. The solution will be the Inventia modules.

Mateusz Labuda – MPWiK, Lębork, Poland