Projects

Kauai Department of Water SCADA Phase 1 and 2

• Study

• Design

• Construction Support Services

County of Kauai, Lihue, Kauai, HI

Kauai Department of Water selected Timberline Engineering for the evaluation and planning, conceptual design,final design, specification, integrator selection, and construction support for an island-wide SCADA system for its groundwater resources. The system concept is centralized monitoring and distributed control, with a spread spectrum radio network to facilitate communications with tanks, booster stations and wells, a total of 86 water facilities.

Radio Testing in Kauai

Kauai’s geographic centerpiece, the mile-high Mount Waialeale, receives more rain than any other place on earth, and creates an abundance of subterranean water. KDOW’s groundwater systems are comprised of many hydraulically independent subsystems in the coastal regions. Each includes wells, intake shafts, tunnels, tanks and booster stations. KDOW envisions a system with as many as 120 remote sites. From the present 86 sites, the system will grow four to five sites a year for the next five years. Some new sites are presently being equipped with RTUs in anticipation of system-wide SCADA/telemetry implementation.

The project’s study and evaluation phase included system requirements workshops, development of hydraulic profile schematics for deriving control strategies, trunked radio system evaluation, site visits, radio tests, and system configuration alternatives development. Telemetry alternatives analyses addressed licensed 900 MHz MAS radio, unlicensed 900 MHz spread spectrum radio, 800 MHz trunked radio, and leased GTE Hawaiian Tel circuits. The system architecture includes virtual private network access to the SCADA system from KDOW’s computer network and access to SCADA data via SQL server. The end product of the study and evaluation phase was a technical report documenting results of analyses, budgetary construction cost estimates, and recommendations for system implementation. The report served as the design basis document for the remainder of the project.

Timberline also conducted a cursory review of a concept to configure a workstation at Lihue as an extension of the Honolulu SCADA system with communication links between Honolulu and Lihue for monitoring and control of Kauai water systems by the Honolulu Board of Water Supply. Also in support of this project, Timberline performed fast-track design, procurement and installation of photovoltaic units at six tank sites under a grant from the State of Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

Padmounted RTU and Antenna Mast Designed for 110 MPH Hurricane Winds

With rugged terrain and isolated hydraulic zones, the SCADA system will have a hierarchical system architecture, with each zone (or neighboring group of zones) equipped with a PLC-based submaster station. The submaster PLCs will communicate with their subordinate remotes over spread spectrum radio systems. The submasters will collect field data and perform supervisory control for the zone, and forward data to the SCADA host at KDOW’s Pua Loke operations center over a frame relay wide-area network. To ensure reliable communications, the radio network has been designed with short, carefully engineered paths, repeaters where necessary, and an occasional telephone connection where radio is impractical.

KDOW’s Pua Loke complex in Lihue will be the site of redundant host computers, SQL database server, and six workstations. The SCADA WAN will be interconnected with the KDOW business systems LAN for access and integration between SCADA and other information management systems.

Final design of the project has been completed, and the project has entered the integrator selection phase.  It is anticipated that construction will begin in the second quarter of 2002 and complete in the last quarter of 2003.