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 30 October 2018
Stadtbetrieb Bornheim Relies on a Standardized Measurement System from WAGO and NIVUS

The project, described by those in charge of it as a “mammoth task,” began with the first station, the booster station on Coloniastraße: At the end of 2017, Stadtbetrieb Bornheim began updating the central monitoring and logging system of its own wastewater plant and the waterworks it runs. In the process, it relied on standardized technology developed by WAGO and NIVUS, which plays the role of a maintenance-free IoT gateway in the substations: More than 40 stations are connected to the control center with the PFC200-based NivuLink Control. The centrally installed controller not only controls the processes, but also monitors the system at the same time. According to the empirical values collected so far, the data flow is running smoothly.

“The starting point was the discontinuation of the analog telephone connections for the remote wastewater stations and the technical update that was due. In some cases, some substations would no longer have been usable with the new digital telephony,” explains Wolfgang Hönighausen, technical director of the waterworks. Action was urgently needed, since about half of the wastewater stations are subject to documentation requirements: “The competent supervisory authority demands complete access to our records.” In parallel, the municipal utility company planned to replace the earlier monitoring and recording system and to update the electrical instrumentation and control engineering, the process control technology and the process visualization in the waterworks. “We took over the wastewater plant and management of the waterworks in January of 2013; at that point we lacked complete documentation and were dealing with significant outages, which were also caused by occasionally unstable data connections,” says Hönighausen. This was unacceptable for this Bornheim company, which is responsible for an area of about 83 square kilometers, with a branched sewer system over 200 kilometers long, as well as drinking water and wastewater connections for more than 48,000 residents.

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Wolfgang Hönighausen, technical director of the waterworks managed by Stadtbetrieb Bornheim, is satisfied with the new standardized measurement system from WAGO and NIVUS for comprehensive networking of the systems.

To solve the problem of the unreliable data connection, the people in charge installed a fiber optic network that links the waterworks to the water towers. Wolfgang Hönighausen and Dominik Hupperich, head of wastewater at Stadtbetrieb Bornheim, also had clear ideas about choosing the new central control system – even if it had been technically possible to port the existing wastewater system to the new electrical instrumentation, control engineering and process control technology. “However, that is a very cost-intensive process; we would have had to purchase new substations or replace old ones.” The parameterization would also have required significant time and effort. Last but not least, they also wanted better technical support for the future: “I like to talk to a human on the phone, not a hotline where I have to submit a ticket,” emphasizes Hönighausen.

“We looked as a few vendors’ systems, including NICOS from NIVUS. We’d been familiar with them for many years in the area of measurement technology, primarily in the wastewater sector,” explains Hupperich. In 2016, together with this company from Eppingen, the municipal utility company developed a water loss elimination concept for the territory of the waterworks and provided the corresponding technical equipment for the stilling wells to allow them to track consumption within the water network. “For this purpose, we used the NIVUS D2W (Device to Web) data management system. That project was a positive experience, including the technical support,” emphasizes Hönighausen.

Intelligent Technology, Consistent Networking

The Bornheim employees got their first impression of the NIVUS process control software NICOS, which monitors and documents the data in central and distributed systems, at NIVUS headquarters. The results of the brief visit were positive; the system fully met the requirements of the municipal utility company. One of them concerned user-friendliness, which had not been entirely satisfactory before, as Hönighausen emphasizes: “To operate the water and wastewater systems, we were dependent on two different systems – one that was responsible for the visualization and control of the waterworks, and a second one for the alerts and documentation, which our wastewater plant also uses.” This made operation less convenient and more laborious for employees. The goal was a solution for both plants that staff could operate both during normal business hours and during on-call service. The system also had to ensure high availability: 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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Guido Uhr, an electrician at Stadtbetrieb Bornheim, works with NivuLink on a daily basis: “The simple visualization and parameterization, as well as the system’s compactness, are very practical advantages that make our job easier.”

“The system solution using NICOS and the PFC200, or NivuLink Control, represents an important step towards predictive maintenance for the operators,” emphasizes Andreas Bosel, director of Data Technology at NIVUS. It provides an intelligent solution for completely networking sensor-based measurement systems – from a single supplier, in a single step. A simple, lean concept that adapts to the existing staff structure in Bornheim and is easy for the employees of the waterworks and wastewater plant to use. Guido Uhr, electrician at Stadtbetrieb Bornheim, works with the standardized technology on a daily basis and emphasizes that “the simple visualization and parameterization, as well as the system’s compactness, are very practical advantages that make our work with NivuLink easier.” The stations are centrally monitored and controlled, which gives them a rapid overview of the distributed systems, as Uhr notes, praising its consistency all the way down to the lowest level. In the event of a fault in a system, the alarm server installed at headquarters alerts him and his colleagues by sending accumulated error messages via email or SMS. The report server handles logging for the buildings. The event reports are automatically generated and provided to the employees.

Various Communication Channels

Various interfaces are available to control the actuators. The NivuLink Control can be programmed using a localized programming sequence for complex calculation and control tasks; the device’s storage capacity for measured values can be easily extended with SD cards. Besides network and fieldbus interfaces, all digital, analog and specialty modules of the WAGO 750 and 753 Series I/O Systems are also supported. Connections to higher-level systems can be established in the traditional way using existing data lines, or wirelessly using the 3G version of the PFC200. An integrated Webserver provides the Bornheim employees with configuration options and status information on the NivuLink Control. A total of 42 substations and one booster station are connected to the WAGO PFC200 or NivuLink Control via DSL or GPRS. In this process, the WAGO I/O System 750 plays the central role of a maintenance-free IoT gateway; as a NivuLink Control, it provides the connections between sensors, actuators and control center. Three additional stations are connected via the plant automation system in the waterworks via the company’s own fiber optic network.

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A total of 42 substations and one booster station are connected to the WAGO PFC200 or NivuLink Control via DSL or GPRS. The centrally installed controller not only controls the processes, but also monitors the system at the same time.