Water/Wastewater Power Pack
Corso Systems has helped many water and wastewater treatment facilities standardize, optimize, and automate their operations. From small-scale rural plants servicing only a few customers—to large municipalities serving hundreds of thousands of households, we’ve helped companies do better by their customers with technology.
We believe transparency, technology (including automation), and training are the best tools to take your operations and operators to the next level.
While some modern water/wastewater facilities are fully digital, and personnel can manage pump stations and respond to alarms on their mobile devices, other facilities are still fully manual with no automation and very little technology. Predictably, many facilities are operating somewhere in the middle. But, no matter where you are on your automation journey, Corso Systems can help you get to the next level with our Water/Wastewater Power Pack!
What is the Corso Systems Water/Wastewater Power Pack?
In our experience, automation and strategic technology can benefit water/wastewater facilities the most in five specific areas. Focusing on each of these areas further maintains and improves operations, increases customer satisfaction, and enhances overall peace of mind about your operations.
Because many facilities can benefit from these tools—and they can jump start almost any sized operation—we call them our Water/Wastewater Power Pack. The Power Pack focuses on these five areas:
If you’ve already implemented some or all of these, great! In every case, Corso Systems can help implement or upgrade the technology in these areas—or in more complicated tools for your facility—and beyond!
In this post, we’ll explain each aspect of our Water/Wastewater Power Pack. It is built with familiar hardware and software to anyone familiar with automation. You will also have full access to all of the code included with the deployment—and you own all of your data and information. We simply handle the hard work for you.
Ready to Power Up Your Water/Wastewater Processes?
Book a 15-minute call with Cody Johnson in sales
No sales pitch, just a candid conversation.
Security
Security is critically important for water/wastewater facilities. Every asset—especially remote assets like pump stations—must be monitored, with restricted access, and run reliably.
Many facilities and systems rely on aging technology, so it’s incredibly important that any connected software and hardware systems are hardened for the latest security threats from bad actors. These systems must also be kept up to date with the latest updates patches to protect the processes as well as all of the data surrounding the treatment processes.
Access controls and user accounts are an important piece of the security foundation since all the best technological innovations in the world can’t protect your facility if you’re using a global admin/password user account.
The Corso Systems Water/Wastewater Power Pack is built on a strong foundation of security best practices including:
Network Security: We implement robust network security measures to protect against unauthorized access to your systems. We’ll implement firewalls, VPNs, intrusion detection/prevention systems, and secure communication protocols across your entire infrastructure.
Access Controls: We start with users in mind, and use industry standard (or better) methods to manage access to your SCADA and automation systems based on user roles and responsibilities. We use strong authentication methods and regularly require users to update their passwords.
Software Updates and Patch Management: We’ll assist in keeping your SCADA and automation systems up-to-date with the latest security patches to address vulnerabilities. This ensures that your system keeps running for the long term, and regularly provides your operators with quality of life improvements.
Data Integrity and Reliability
Much like Food and Beverage Manufacturing and other heavily regulated industries data integrity and reliability is of utmost importance in Water/Wastewater.
Not only does this include process data to ensure equipment is running as intended including managing ongoing maintenance, it includes quality control and LIMS data, operator access logs, and overall SCADA Audit Tracking tools to see who has made changes to the system and when they were made.
Taking advantage of the modern SCADA solution, Ignition, simplifies this process. Using the built-in Tag Historian module lets you keep historical data from any of your data points, operator access logs using the built-in security system, and Audit Logs using their built-in tool to manage all aspects of the system.
Ignition also provides full redundancy capabilities along with automated backups of your system and all critical data.
You can also take advantage of cloud-based systems where needed for even more peace of mind.
Ready to Upgrade & Secure Your Water/Wastewater Facility?
Book a 15-minute call with Cody, the Corso Systems Head of Sales
No sales pitches, just a candid conversation.
Alarm Management
In the course of normal operation alarms come and go as needed. Operators can handle them when they popup and move on with their day.
When things go wrong and a lot of alarms come in all at once even seasoned operators can quickly become overwhelmed by an alarm avalanche.
A very important part of the Water/Wastewater Power Pack is Alarm Management.
We work with your team to understand and classify all of the alarms in your system. This includes standardizing alarm messages, triggers, and criticality levels. We also work with your team to understand how to best present alarms, notify them as alarms come in, and build in triage tools to help manage what needs to get done first when a handful or more alarms are all coming in simultaneously.
Our tools also maintain a historical alarm log you can use for understanding events after they have been resolved, help troubleshooting response times and protocols, and even use them along with your other process data to better understand your equipment and start implementing predictive maintenance systems.
Remote Monitoring and Control
In today’s “do more with less” world of Water/Wastewater remote access into your main control room, and to remote pump stations is more important than ever.
Giving operators remote access to your system, including on mobile devices can be a game changer for your operations and budget.
Yes remote access won’t solve all problems, you might need to go turn on a tripped circuit breaker, or calibrate a level sensor, however it can save you a lot of time and headache managing every day control needs.
For managing general operations, alarms, and overall control of the system remote access can be invaluable. Allowing operators into the system using secure methods described above like a VPN gives them the same level of comfort as if they were sitting in the control room. Operators can monitor operations, get alarm notifications, manage setpoints, look at trends, and do anything they would normally do at a computer remotely.
This saves you travel time and headache when troubleshooting problems at remote sites. Many facilities have even used remote access as a way to reduce the number of overall hour required for full coverage staffing, allowing operators to work a more reasonable schedule since they can easily log in after hours and fix something as it is happening rather than sitting around in the control room waiting for it to occur.
All of your remote control HMIs can use the exact same interface your operators are familiar with, not requiring any additional training or software development time to put remote access to work for you!
Compliance and Reporting
Compliance and reporting are critical aspects of wastewater treatment, ensuring that facilities adhere to regulatory standards and environmental guidelines. Several key compliance and reporting requirements are crucial for wastewater treatment operations, and you can manage them with the Corso Systems Water/Wastewater Power Pack.
These reports include but are not limited to:
Discharge Permits:
Wastewater treatment plants typically require permits to specify the allowable limits for various pollutants in discharged effluent. Compliance involves regularly monitoring and reporting the concentrations of these pollutants to ensure they fall within permitted levels.
Effluent Quality Monitoring:
Regular sampling and analysis of effluent quality are essential for assessing the effectiveness of the treatment process. Monitoring parameters such as biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), and nutrient levels helps ensure that treated water meets regulatory standards.
Pathogen Monitoring:
Pathogen levels (such as fecal coliform levels) must be closely monitored to assess the safety of treated water for human and environmental health. Compliance often involves regular testing and reporting on these microbiological indicators.
National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Reporting:
In regions where NPDES permits are applicable, operators must adhere to the reporting requirements established by environmental agencies. They must submit regular reports on monitored data, compliance status, and any corrective actions taken.
Record Keeping:
Comprehensive record-keeping is crucial for demonstrating compliance. This includes maintaining records of monitoring data, maintenance activities, equipment calibrations, and any corrective actions taken in response to non-compliance events.
Emergency Response Plans:
Wastewater treatment facilities are often required to have detailed emergency response plans. Compliance involves regularly reviewing and updating these plans, conducting drills, and reporting on preparedness measures.
Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Reporting:
For facilities that handle certain hazardous substances, TRI reporting may be required to specify the quantities of specific chemicals used, produced, or released into the environment.
Spill Reporting:
Prompt reporting of any accidental releases or spills is a critical compliance requirement. Facilities must report the type and quantity of the released substances, actions taken to mitigate the release, and preventive measures implemented to avoid future incidents.
Air Emissions Reporting:
Facilities with air emissions associated with their wastewater treatment processes may be required to report on the types and quantities of pollutants released into the air. This is often part of broader air quality compliance regulations.
Public Notification:
Transparency is key for wastewater treatment compliance. Facilities may be required to inform the public about their activities, potential risks, and compliance status. Reporting can include public notices, community meetings, and publicly accessible reporting mechanisms.
Compliance with these regulations helps protect the environment and public health, maintains the credibility of wastewater treatment facilities within the community, and ensures the sustainability of water resources. Regular and accurate reporting is fundamental for demonstrating commitment to environmental responsibility and regulatory adherence. You can easily manage all of these requirements (and more) with the Corso Systems Water/Wastewater Power Pack.
What is the Water/Wastewater Power Pack?
Our Water/Wastewater Power Pack is built with the Ignition SCADA platform, process automation hardware, and network infrastructure (such as firewalls for VPN access). If you already have PLCs, we can easily integrate with them. Or if you want to take your operation to the next level, we will work with our trusted partners (including US-based controls manufacturer, Opto 22) to help upgrade your existing equipment with modern controls. We can also program and commission those systems!
What you get with the Water/Wastewater Power Pack:
Ignition SCADA System including Corso Systems Water/Wastewater Power Pack standardized functionality with:
Operator interface/HMI screens
Process historian for continuous data logging
Reporting capabilities for overall compliance and general process information
Built-in security
Tools for managing data integrity and reliability
Alarm management tools
Remote monitoring and control capabilities
Process dashboards, trends, and data analysis tools
Unlimited screens, data points, and users
A database to store all your logged data and operations information
PLC programming to support automated operation of your equipment using our standardized control libraries
Ongoing support to help you get the most out of your system
Training for your team for managing and utilizing all of your new tools
Get Started Today!
Let’s take your Water/Wastewater process to the next level. Schedule a call with Cody Johnson in sales to learn what our Water/Wastewater Power Pack can do for you!
No sales pitch, just a candid conversation.
