Unifying diverse PLCs & RTUs under a single SCADA HMI

The story of Lake Worth, Florida

The City of Lake Worth, Florida, nestled halfway between West Palm and Boynton Beaches on the sunny Atlantic coast, is steeped in history and has a thriving population of 35,000 residents.

To provide clean water and sewage management services to these residents, the Lake Worth Utilities department maintains a network of water management facilities, including lift stations and a water treatment plant.

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In 2002, after installing a Digital Control Corp. (DCC) pump controller network, the City faced the task of creating a central point of communication with these new devices and their existing DataFlow Systems lift station RTUs. Neither DCC, nor DataFlow Systems, was able to provide a communications interface to access both networks from the same application and so the Utility turned to Trihedral Engineering Limited and VTScada, a software product developed specifically for this type of application.

VTScada has the unique ability to provide synchronous monitoring and control for numerous telemetry devices, including DCC controllers and DataFlow RTUs, within a single application, running in a Windows environment.

: Displays created by lake Worth Utilities Department

Trihedral provided a VTScada application to communicate with both pieces of hardware, and placed the application on a server located in the water treatment plant. Doug Lovelace, a plant staff member, designed the display screens using the VTScada drag and drop toolset, and used the software's integrated area- partitioning capabilities to divide the application into two separate interfaces; one for the collections system and one for the water treatment plant. The application included hot-backup redundant server support, remote configuration and control client interfaces, and a VTScada Internet server. Automated alarm call-out features were utilized by late-shift plant operators to inform them of alarm conditions while away from the control room.

Since this initial installation, new hardware has been integrated into the Utility's telemetry system, including Bristol Babcock and Motorola RTUs and SquareD PLCs. All of these devices have been integrated into the existing VTScada system by independent integrators, and the City continues to expand its software system, adding new clients and features as new requirements arise.

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