What's the Worst that Can Happen for Water and Waste-water?

Whatever is happening in their plant room, raw sewage continues to be produced. Even if the system has failed and can’t treat the sewage, it’s still being produced. Eventually, the worst-case scenario isn’t production downtime and lost output. It’s raw sewage being pumped into rivers or overflowing onto the streets, and multi-million pound fines for polluting the environment. 

So intermittent erroneous tripping of motors and pumps at a major pumping station poses not only a diagnostic issue, but also a major health and environmental risk. 

Looking for trouble

The potential problems resulting from an erroneous trip mean that the system requires continual monitoring, ready for an immediate reset in the event of loss of power. This relies on an employee permanently stationed in front of a control room console, watching for signs of a trip and ready to hit the reset button immediately. 

It is a situation which clearly can’t continue, and the utility company has spent many hours on site investigating possible causes of the trips, before deciding they need to call in the experts to pinpoint the problem. 

So just over two weeks ago (at time of writing) they contacted ERIKS’ Specialist Engineering, Greeford site, which in turn alerted ERIKS Electronic Services in Dudley.   

Taking aim

The large number of items of critical equipment in the plant room make it impossible to utilise ordinary diagnostic techniques to identify the cause of the erroneous tripping. Instead, ERIKS has opted to use e-Connect to monitor a range of parameters.

ERIKS’ experience and know-how has helped to identify harmonics, voltage, current and power factors as the most likely possible causes of tripping and – within those causes – the third, fifth, seventh, ninth and eleventh as the most important harmonics to monitor. This will provide a general view of the situation in the plant room, which can then be reviewed with the aim of narrowing the parameters and conducting more specific monitoring until the cause is finally accurately targeted and identified. 

The e-Connect Series ranges from 1-5, where each model offers increased functionality. Series 3 not only provides status, measuring and trending functions but also – crucially in this case – has its own power supply. Without a built-in UPS, the equipment itself would trip out at the same time as the assets it is monitoring, preventing it from identifying the source of the trip. 

However the hardware still needed some adaptation to the specific customer requirements.  Fortunately, given the criticality of the customer’s situation, ERIKS’ in-house engineering skills and resources meant the bespoke unit was designed, built and despatched within just three days. 

Not watching… just waiting

The unit was installed just over a week ago, so as yet there is no meaningful result – unless you count the fact there’s no longer a need for an employee to watch a screen 24/7 in case of a trip.

Instead, personnel are notified immediately by text and email. Then, as the e-Connect Series 3 incorporates an automatic reset option, they can enable a remote restart as soon as they have carried out any necessary safety checks, such as determining there are no engineers carrying out work on-site. The restart can even be initiated from a mobile phone. 

So ERIKS e-Connect hardware provides not just one but three major benefits for the customer. 

Firstly, the plant room assets are being continually monitored, providing valuable data to help identify the cause of the tripping, and enabling a long-term solution once the precise cause has been isolated. 

Secondly, the continual automatic monitoring frees an employee from the unproductive task of visually observing the plant room’s operation. 

And thirdly, the built-in remote restart function minimises plant room downtime: reducing the risk of a sewage leak, pollution and financial penalties. 

All of which means that the worst that can happen, won’t.