IMDS
Modelling SA Water’s
pipelines to optimise
water transfer
Case Study
SA Water
Contact Chris Overton
322 Glen Osmond Road, Myrtle Bank S.A. 5064 p. +61 8 7324 5229 e. [email protected] w. www.gtsgroup.com.au
Green Technology Services (GTS) was founded in Adelaide, South
Australia to preserve the knowledge and experience of the former
Ericsson Utilities group when it ceased operations in 2011; and to
continue supporting Ericsson’s customers in South Australia.
With an unrivalled knowledge of OSIsoft’s PI platform and decades
of engineering experience, GTS was established with a strong
focus on building long-term relationships and delivering successful
outcomes for our customers.
Today, GTS is Australia’s leading OSIsoft PI specialist, providing
solutions to customers across Australia including APA Group, SA
Water, Melbourne Water, Rio Tinto, Arrium, Energy Australia and
Origin Energy.
Why Choose GTS
We believe the greatest asset we can offer our customers is our
experience, because it is only with the benefit of experience that
the right decisions are made. When it comes to PI there is simply
no other integrator in Australia with our expertise and experience –
we are ‘the PI guys’
Our experience helps us support our customers to develop their
data infrastructure goals from ‘blueprint’ to finished solution. We
understand our customers’ specific business needs but our wealth
of experience means we can also bring to the table our own toolkit
of software enhancements as well as best-practice
recommendations gained over many years of building big data
solutions.
We place a great value on customer relationships; we want to
understand your business and build a partnership with you based
on honesty, reliability and a common sense approach to delivery.
If you’re not happy, we’re not doing it right.
Some of Australia’s leading blue chip companies and major public
sector organisations have put their trust in GTS and as a result,
seek to build strong and lasting relationships. Our customer
retention remains very high.
We’re a small integrator with big solution experience; we have the
agility and flexibility of the boutique integrator, while maintaining
the quality practices of our big organisation background that are
the core of good engineering services.
Company Profile
Founding Partners of GTS
approval and execution using SCADA-side plug-ins developed
by GTS.
Asset Framework
The key to the solution’s configurability lay in OSIsoft’s Asset
Framework (AF). AF is a powerful data infrastructure tool
because it allows a logical, hierarchical structure to be defined
that combines data from any source (such as PI points
interfaced to SCADA, databases or other systems) with
calculations or static data. This is a great way to abstract any
complexity in deriving data from the users.
For the IDMS solution GTS created a model of the pipeline in AF
combining operational data from the PI server with forecast data
contained in SQL Server, preconfigured calculations and
constraints and other asset information manually maintained by
planners to provide different scenarios for operators to use (such
as Summer and Winter models).
A key feature of AF is that Data References can be customised.
These can be developed in .NET allowing complex algorithms to
produce attribute values where there is no suitable built-in
function. For the IDMS solution GTS developed purpose-built
Data References for a variety of functions assisting planners
with developing AF models.
ProcessBook
For the IDMS user interface it was desirable to use OSIsoft’s
ProcessBook given that SA Water staff already had experience
in its use. ProcessBook is a graphic development tool providing
a set of objects designed to integrate with data from a PI
database, AF or other data sources. A key feature of
ProcessBook is the ‘Element Relative Display’ (ERD) which
automatically updates values in a ProcessBook display based
on an AF element selected by the user in a navigation pane.
This is a convenient way to build a single display that can be
used across a number of assets or locations with the same data
structure. For example to build a dashboard for all pump
stations or treatment plants.
Although detailed graphics can be created with the ‘drag-and-
drop’ tools available in ProcessBook an important feature is that
it can also be programmed for more complex functionality. For
the IDMS solution GTS developed extensive code for functions
such as managing system configuration, maintaining forecast
data, interactions between displays, retrieving process status
and logs and ‘publishing’ data to the SCADA system.
Customisations
The ‘number-crunching’ optimisation process is very complex
and therefore time-consuming, taking up to several minutes;
GTS developed a ‘Queue Monitor’ to view and manage
optimisation processes and provide redundancy and load-
balancing between two powerful servers dedicated to running
optimisations.
The result was a solution empowering planners to develop multiple seasonal or environmental scenarios with all the operational, forecast and business rule data necessary to configure a model for optimisation. The
solution created power annual savings in the order of 2% to 5%
A number of bespoke components were required to integrate
the business-side processes with the SCADA side.
GTS developed a number of utilities and iFIX graphics to take pump schedules from the business side, present them for operator review and approval, and execute them using established SCADA processes shared by manual schedule entry screens.
Benefits The result was a solution empowering planners to develop
multiple seasonal or environmental scenarios feeding into a
rich user interface providing operators with all the operational,
forecast and business rule data necessary to configure a model
for optimisation.
The optimised pump schedule could then be passed on to the
SCADA system for human review and approval and then
automatically executed.
A series of time-consuming tasks from planner’s preparing
seasonal ‘rules’ and long-term water transfer targets; to
operator’s preparing pump schedules and manually entering
pump commands into the SCADA system was reduced to a few
minutes work with improved efficiency and reduced risk of
violating constraints.
The solution created power annual savings in the order of 2%
to 5% (variable depending on operational constraints).
Details of the Case
Business Situation
SA Water maintains an extensive pipeline infrastructure
comprising more than AU$13 Billion in assets for the harvesting,
treatment and supply of water to 1.5 million people throughout
South Australia.
South Australia consumes around 220GL of water annually with
about 80% sourced from the River Murray. Energy costs for
pumping water from the river are around $20,000,000 annually.
The high – and rising – cost of energy, coupled with the complex
pipeline-reservoir network and frequent operational constraints
led SA Water to seek a software decision support tool for system
engineers and pipeline operators to:
Create optimized pumping schedules
Reduce energy costs by up to 5%
Provide pipeline models for “what-if” analysis
Leverage the existing OSIsoft PI Operational Data Store
(ODS)
Technical Situation
SA Water had a network of SCADA systems across South
Australia comprising some 150,000 tags and a well-established
Operational Data Store (ODS) using an OSIsoft PI Historian to
aggregate the data from numerous SCADA sites. However the
SCADA and business systems operated on separate networks
and there was limited business visibility of SCADA data.
Bulk water transfers relied heavily on operator experience and
manual scheduling procedures which were time-consuming and
offered very limited optimisation capabilities.
It was desirable to leverage SA Water’s existing investment in the
PI software suite to provide operators with a simple but powerful
tool to generate pumping schedules which could then be
integrated into the SCADA system.
Solution GTS developed a solution that brought together operational data
from SCADA systems, demand forecasts, asset information and
operational constraints. A user interface presented the current
state of tanks and pumps together with expected demand trends
and allowed operators to configure the model using their own
experience.
The model configuration data was combined with thousands of
elements of more static pipeline data and a comprehensive set of
operational constraints and processed through an ‘optimisation
engine’ using EPANET developed by a third-party hydraulic
modelling specialist to produce a detailed pumping schedule.
The resulting schedule could then be reviewed and tailored by
operators before being issued to the SCADA system for final
Key Facts
Customer: SA Water
Budget: AU$3M
Duration: 2 years
Key Facts
GTS Team: Technical Lead, PI Designer, Lead PI Developer, PI Developer
Products Used: OSI PI Universal File Loader, OSI PI Historian, OSI PI Asset Framework, OSI PI Notifications,
OSI PI Advanced Calculation Engine, ASP.Net
Data Flow within the IDMS Solution