City of Concord, NC

Background:

The City of Concord Department of Wastewater Resources operates 28 pump stations and 438 miles of sewer pipelines to support 23,000 customers. Originally, traditional phone lines were used at the pump stations to monitor wastewater levels. Frequent and severe lightning storms often crippled the system by sending out multiple false alarms of high tank levels. With each false alarm a dispatch crew was required to visit the site to evaluate the situation. It quickly became a burden to investigate each alarm.

Based on this frustration, the City of Concord sought a solution that would minimize the false alarms, while reliably alerting operators of high water levels. They eventually selected to deploy 28 Telemetric MicroRTUs on lift station throughout their system. The devices are monitoring the following:

• High Water Alarm
• Seal Fail
• Motor over Temperature
• Power outages and voltage conditions

Notifications have been established to page or send a text message to a cell phone for key personnel should the High Water or Seal Fail alarm conditions occur. Data is transmitted over the cellular control channel and displayed on a secure web site. The web site allows users to view equipment status from any PC with an internet connection. In addition, up to 14 months of data is stored with a unit ID, and date and time stamp to assist with maintenance analysis or troubleshooting.

Telemetric Devices prove reliable during Ice Storm

In December 2002, North Carolina suffered a severe ice storm that left much of the state under an inch of ice. Under the weight of ice and the accompanying windstorms, branches collapsed under the stress and power lines fell. During this time, an estimated 1.5 million homes and businesses were without power.

Included in this outage were the City of Concord’s Wastewater Management facilities. During the storm, each of the 28 lift-stations lost power, some for up to two-days. Unable to rely on their existing infrastructure, the City quickly became concerned about spillage. The City needed to know when water levels were high, so a remote generator could power pumps to draw down the wet wells.

Results:

During the power outage, the City used the Telemetric devices to report wastewater levels. The system operator, based in the Operations Center would track alarms over the web site, and send a rapid response crew with a backup generator to pump down the pits, preventing any spillage.

Future Plans:

Based on the successful results with the Telemetric units during the ice storm, the City of Concord has decided to expand the program within the next year. The new usage will require the Telemetric units to read the volume of the pond and remotely start and stop the pumps.