Virtualization helps the Smart City Solution

 

Carson City has achieved its goals through a complete set of innovative tools, capabilities and solutions.

“The virtual machines that we've implemented here in Carson City have allowed us to reduce the burden of administration and overhead costs while significantly increasing our reliability and disaster recovery processes." 

James Jacklett, Electrical/Signal Supervisor

Traffic light monitoring at Carson City

 

The Smart City solution at Carson City also involves traffic light and transportation system monitoring. It involves 70 Signalized intersections in 3 different counties.

“The City maintains all of the traffic lights in Carson City and Douglas County. Integration with Wonderware has enabled real time status, alarm notification, and historization of the state of communications for the transportation system; which provides us with better monitoring and operational readiness.” 

James Jacklett, Electrical/Signal Supervisor

Solar Power at Carson City

 

The Smart City solution built on Wonderware software helps operate and maintain the solar plants at Carson City.

“This solution also includes the management of the Public Works solar plants that provide up to 748,000 KWH of clean power each year” 

Brandon Mathiesen, Water Production Supervisor

SmartGlance and Situational Awareness

Carson City is able to view its InTouch HMI screens from anywhere using the iPad and mobile phones giving its operators situational awareness at all times.

Because everything is stored in its Wonderware Historian, Carson City enables its senior staff to get instant access to key performance indicators and critical process information right on their mobile devices. Situational awareness is greater than ever. All of this is done through the help of Wonderware SmartGlance.

The iPad for Water and Wastewater Plants

Leveraging virtualization, iPads, and smart phones to increase the efficiency of its operators and management, Carson City is able to increase situational awareness and achieve a high level of operational readiness.

 

It seems common place now but it's very impressive how far we've gone. Today's Smart City solution allows Carson City operators to monitor and control every aspect of the water and waste water plants while on the move.

 

Smart City solution delivers clean water

 

The scope of the Wonderware solution at Carson City is fairly large. Let's focus on the water and wastewater system in this post.

 

Carson City, Nevada - A Smart City Success Story

 

 

In order to achieve its goals, the men and women of the Carson City Public Works Department created an infrastructure revolving around the capabilities of its people and the best available smart city technology from Invensys.

"The Carson City Public Works Department is responsible for taking care of the City's water, wastewater, transportation, landfill, fleet, environmental and renewable power systems. With a staff of over 120 people we are often called on to assist the public in many different ways and many of our duties go on around the clock." 

Darren Schulz, Deputy Public Works Director

Leveraging virtualization, iPads, and smart phones to improve the efficiency of its operators and management, Carson City has increased situational awareness and achieved a high level of operational readiness.

 

Watch the 9REN success story video and find out about optimized asset excellence

Renewable energy. It's the mantra for today's society -- to identify and implement clean renewable energy sources to wean us off our dependence on fossil fuels. This is one of the fields where Spain and Italy are taking the initiative to a global level and 9REN Group is a clear example of a company leading the way.

Watch the success story video and find out how Wonderware helped 9REN operate all of the 580 solar plants from their Madrid office.

9REN: Solar Power Plant Business Metrics

After completing the Wonderware solution, 9REN was able to produce these compelling business results.

• From a single control center, 9REN can effectively monitor the operations at each of the 528 solar plants, ensuring continuous generation of 425 MWh a day.
  
• 9REN's efficiency has improved at such a point that staffing has been reduced by 15% - from three to one - for control room operation, allowing the company to focus its personnel on other important tasks
• Event recognition has increased by 50% and time to obtain performance monitoring reports has been reduced from one month to two days
• Solar trackers production has improved by 5%

Why Wonderware for 9REN's solar plants?

9REN wanted a solution that would provide an effective platform for collaboration, would have tools that enable standardization, reduce engineering time and cost savings.

They chose Wonderware System Platform, InTouch HMI and Historian as the main components of their EOSystem because it provides flexibility and scalability, while still being easy to use, maintain and upgrade.

What is the EOSystem?

EOSystem is a solution created by 9REN to operate and maintain the hundreds of solar plants in Spain and Italy. "The EOSystem allows 9REN to control all photovoltaic installations from a single application in the control room from practically anywhere", says Antonio Palacios Higueras, Services Technical Manager for 9REN.

The challenges of running multiple solar plants

Why did 9REN opt for a Wonderware solution? It was to answer three main challenges.

9REN Photovoltaic Solar Panel Power Plants

 

 

9REN develops, builds and operates renewable power plants across Spain and Italy. They deliver over 90,000 Megawatts of power per year while operating 568 photovoltaic installations.

To manage its plants, 9REN created EOSystem, a solution built on the Wonderware System Platform. For this innovative solution, 9REN won the Invensys Open Asset Excellence Award in 2010.

Bermuda Electric (BELCO) success story video

Watch the success story video and find out how Invensys helped Bermuda Electric provide a secure, reliable and sustainable electric power system for the people of Bermuda.

Bermuda Electric: Evolution and Modernization

 

 

In 1995, BELCO began looking for a solution that would ensure their facilities could operate consistently in the present plus provide a strong basis for future implementations. The company chose Wonderware® software products, starting with the InTouch® Human Machine Interface (HMI). Subsequent upgrades through the years saw the continuous upgrade to the newest InTouch version as new plants are put on-line and as new enhancements are added to the solution.

This constant evolution and modernization culminated in BELCO's use of System Platform. The addition of System Platform is a high point in BELCO's history as it provided provided a common, efficient and centralized infrastructure that helped them develop, maintain, control and manage applications with exceptional scalability, openness and ease. The arrival of the Wonderware Historian and recently of Wonderware IntelaTrac helped BELCO achieve ISO 14001 compliance, for its state-of-the-art production, transmission and distribution of electricity – the first organization in the territory to achieve this prestigious milestone!

Part of BELCO's continuous modernization also involved the use of Triconex® Tricon™ fault-tolerant controller, a key Invensys product.