A 2024 Black & Veatch survey of water, wastewater, and stormwater professionals found that nearly 80 per cent of water utility stakeholders see ageing infrastructure as the most challenging issue facing the industry today.
This ongoing situation comes as the sector grapples with the related issues of high operational expense, unsustainable energy consumption and water loss levels, and an ageing and shrinking workforce. The dilemma has often stemmed from a lack of funds to modernise core pumping and piping networks and the water and wastewater automation solutions that control them.
Fortunately, new Industry 4.0-related digitalisation technologies now make affordable infrastructure modernisation possible.
One example of this is the recent introduction of industrial automation products that enable the concept of universal automation, which allows industrial automation platforms to be built on software-defined, asset-centric, vendor agnostic architectures.
When innovative solutions are introduced into water and wastewater operations, users realise three benefits above and beyond system modernisation
Lower implementation costs
The ability to connect to new and more innovative apps enables more creative and less expensive approaches to address costly issues such as leak management, energy consumption, and asset.
With the implementation of systems like EcoStruxure Automation Expert, utilities can create a complete digital lifecycle for their automation systems, meaning new challenges can be met faster and with less risk.
Future proofing the workforce
As the generation of water and wastewater workers who’ve kept the water flowing for decades retire, specialised knowledge is lost.
Next-generation workers enter water utilities and view existing proprietary automation systems as archaic and see them as obstacles to more efficient operations.
New systems such as EcoStruxure Automation Expert provide the simplicity of IT-like solutions and are intuitive for younger workers who are used to the concept of easy application portability – take, for example, smartphone apps that work on any brand of phone. This saves on training time and expense and lowers the risk of operational errors moving forward.
Increasing operational sustainability
Given the water sector accounts for approximately four per cent of global electricity consumption, it’s no surprise that reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions are key sustainability priorities for the sector.
However, true sustainability calls for more than this. Other sources of waste, such as water leakage, are also a significant sustainability concern in the water industry
The World Bank estimates that on average, between 25–35 per cent of water is lost during pumping and pipeline transport operations.
Digital solutions that take a holistic approach to automation, like EcoStruxure Automation Expert, can record and track far more operational data and share it across all departments so that better decisions can be made to drastically reduce the amount of water, energy and chemical process waste.
Interoperable automation removing technology constraints
EcoStruxure Automation Expert is a universal automation solution. It is application-centric rather than controller/device-centric, which results in the decoupling of hardware and software.
In essence, the software is no longer tied to hardware. This means end users are free to design or adapt systems to enable a more flexible response to the ever-changing supply and demand-side business conditions.
EcoStruxure Automation Expert is designed to make the interoperability of software applications far less complex and time-consuming than traditional hardware automation systems.
It is also designed to handle both real-time control and any-time services (IT/OT convergence). Rather than having to build and purchase IT/OT gateways, EcoStruxure Automation Expert embeds native IT/OT integration. This approach simplifies the user experience for all stakeholders, be they engineers, plant operators, systems integrators or machine builders.
This software-defined solution aims to allow users to take advantage of greater levels of flexibility and choice. Users can select the best solution from the most innovative software available in the marketplace to address issues, such as water leakage from ageing pipe networks or the need to improve the operational efficiency of pumping operations.
Unifying the control of plants and water collection and distribution systems enables a more circular process, minimising the amount of freshwater used while maximising wastewater reuse.
Asset-centric automation saving time and effort
EcoStruxure Automation Expert enables a proper asset-centric system, from the design phase all the way through to to the lifecycle’s operation and maintenance stages.
Designs can be simulated virtually, off-line, so that utilities can test “what if” scenarios before deployment and assure optimisation of new assets.
Once an asset, like a new pump, is defined as a digital asset, deployment is drag and drop in the end-user interface. The design information – including electrical, mechanical and control data – can be included as part of the asset.
During operation, any operator or technician who requires access to the information can optimise performance or troubleshoot issues as they arise. The information is automatically kept up to date throughout the lifecycle of the asset.
This drastically simplifies the life of engineers, control room operators, and maintenance personnel by providing access to one up-to-date version of the truth for individual assets.
For example, the service technician can be granted access to manufacturing data, electrical data and online access to updated manuals. As a result, the mean time to repair (MTTR) is much shorter, as the technician does not have to hunt in multiple places for the data needed to perform the proper maintenance.
Access to updated information also improves overall uptime and reliability.
Evolution instead of revolution
Deploying a solution such as EcoStruxure Automation Expert is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Many utilities choose to start on a smaller scale – with even a single pumping station.
EcoStruxure Automation Expert uses a unique ‘wrap and replace’ approach, incorporating existing legacy designs into the new control system. This approach preserves current investments and the look and feel of designs that staff are familiar with, helping to make the most of available capital and minimising training needs.
New systems and existing systems can run together, gathering and sharing performance data in a more gradual, less costly, and less disruptive approach to system modernisation.
This allows for the benefits of interoperability and new, cost-effective applications to then be gradually scaled up – along with their financial benefits – across the entire water cycle.
For more information, visit https://www.se.com/au/en/product-range/23643079-ecostruxure-automation-expert/
