Timber Line Electric and Control Corp.

THE NEED FOR REAL-TIME DATA SPURS DISTRICT TO INVEST IN RADIO TELEMETRY 

The City of Cheyenne Wyoming has recently experienced rapid growth, resulting in the Water Department being heavily dependent on remote well fields. Monitoring of the well fields then became an important priority. Timber Line Electric and Control was selected to meet the Utility's telemetry needs.

During the early 1990's the City of Cheyenne experienced record-breaking growth. Cheyenne's status as the State's Capital, along with its location adjacent to two major interstates, has made the city part of the rapidly expanding Rocky Mountain Front Range. Concurrent with the growth, the City's water needs grew rapidly. The Board of Public Utilities, (B.O.P.U.), utilized both ground and surface water, which was blended together. The surface water's head-works consisted of far-flung reservoirs. The main source of ground water was a series of distant wells. Many of the wells utilized aging equipment, and raw water production drop-offs were common due to power spikes and pump failures. Each time a pump went off-line, someone from the water department staff had to make a 30 mile road trip to track down which well had failed. This labor intensive process resulted in frequent overtime hours as well as wear and tear on the Utility's trucks. Additionally, the inconsistent well flows made it difficult to maintain precise water quality.

In the Autumn of 1997, the B.O.P.U. and their consulting engineer, States West Water Resources, requested bids for installing radio telemetry at 8 well field sites, and supplying a computerized central control station. Although the original bid specification was written around another product, the district gladly pre-approved Motorola MOSCAD's after a demonstration of the product's features and advantages. Timber Line was awarded the bid, and the project proceeded rapidly.

One of the major challenges to implementing this project was the topographical diversity of the two major well fields. One well field is south of the Round Top WTP, with fairly easy radio path profiles. The other field, located north and west approximately 20 miles, is known as the Merritt well field. It is located on the back side of a high mesa known as Table Mountain. The Merritt well field requires a repeater on Table Mountain to transmit information to the Round Top plant. Additionally, several future well sites will be so remote as to require the store-and-forward technology offered by the MOSCAD's. As a final design, Timber Line utilized 2 pairs of 900MHz frequencies as well as a Simplex UHF frequency for the store-and-forward sites.

With the Moscad RTU infrastructure in place, Cheyenne's computerized central quickly began showing real-time data. The Intellution's FIX 32 control screens currently include data on well levels, well flows, pump status, low temperature alarms and intrusion alarms.  The SCADA system provides real-time data and allows for remote start/stop control of the pumps.  Chapman says, "The MOSCAD telemetry has helped to reduce our troubleshooting time by directing employees to the exact site of a troublesome well."  Jim Van Dorn, who maintains the well field for the utility, stated, "Our Federal Well field is very remote and gravity feeds to the plant.  When a pump shut off out there, it would take two hours before we knew there was a problem.  We then had to dispatch a maintenance person out to the wells, and adjust our blending ratios of well and surface water to maintain our water quality.  The whole process often took five hours.  Now, with the MOSCAD system, we know about a problem immediately and can react quickly."

The BOPU has contracted Timber Line to add MOSCAD telemetry to an additional 15 sites consisting of wells, pump stations and a metering station. Chapman stated that, "Timber Line did a great job of installing and integrating the SCADA system.  Any glitches have been dealt with in a timely manner.  Help is just a phone call away in the rare instance when the system does fail.  Overall, the Motorola equipment has been very reliable."