Manager/ORC of Iredell Water Corporation to David Hutchens, Dorsett Controls SCADA Sales Manager, with information on how his system helps him save money. The numbers are substantiated by other customers’ feedback with similar operations.

“David,

We have been granted reduced monitoring from NCDENR – Public Water Supply. Site visits were required to each of our 32 wells every day of the week. Now, with reduced monitoring, we have only one required site visit per week to each well. I put together a quick chart to show some of the costs. If we had to perform site visits 7 days per week, now we would be forced to work rotating shifts, pay overtime, or hire additional people. This is because of the time it would take away from our other duties. This additional travel would mean additional vehicles, insurance, etc.

While the savings are great, receiving all the information from our sites and having the control that we now have is the biggest advantage. Knowing that a soft start for a motor has tripped out or that chlorine residual has dropped within a minute is our greatest value. Pump run times, pumping rates, etc., all factor in on pump and well maintenance, which in turn reflects back on future budgets and asset management.

Since we’ve had the Dorsett Controls system running, a couple of notable things that we found are we knew a major leak was occurring on a holiday weekend (came from pump run report and tank levels not increasing). We were notified of phase loss at a well that ended up being a leg burnt up on the electric utilities line. We also found that one of the wells had a hole in the piping inside the well itself. We saw this because the pumping rates didn’t match the pump curve and the cl2 levels were going up and down sporadically. This is because the cl2 pumps increase or decrease based on flow all computed by the SCADA system. We also found a few leaks occurring on our cl2 pumps or injection lines which would cause cl2 residuals to drop. Our alarms for residuals are set above the state minimums, which allow us a buffer zone. The SCADA system allows us to shut off the well remotely until the problem is investigated and fixed thus avoiding any untreated water from entering into the distribution system. It’s hard to put into words what all the information retrieved from our SCADA system does for our company and our customers.”