Author: Muhammad Anser Kazim, Akhtar Kalam, Aladin Zayegh
Organisation: College of Engineering and Science, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Email: muhammad.kazim@live.vu.edu.au

Abstract:

Monitoring, operation and controls of a Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) is a complex and challenging task. The power equipment in most of the existing or old WWTPs, that generates electricity from biogas produced in the water treatment process, requires intensive supervision and control to enable failsafe and redundant electricity cogeneration process. This research focuses on setting up an effective communication system between power equipment at WWTP distribution substations and power company`s zone substation. The required philosophy is developed in order to achieve an automated and failsafe communication network for SCADA link to enable WWTP electricity cogeneration utilising exiting or old infrastructure. This critical multidirectional power and data flow requires proper standard compliant and semantic data models to guarantee smooth and safe operation. It also needs flexibility and ability to develop and implement the telemetric mapping philosophy between the substations during various scenarios of electricity cogeneration and faults. This research has resulted in a proposal of smart remote terminal units (RTUs) on existing or old infrastructure of WWTP. They aim to provide a platform for remote data collection, to and from the power network equipment, thus reducing or eliminating any unsupervised functions on site. The proposed design is IEC standards compliant for optimised remote control and performance monitoring with any Human Machine Interface (HMI) of a remote substation. The research was carried out using least cost, technically acceptable principles at Melbourne Water Western Treatment Plant (MW-WTP), which is the largest treatment facility in the southern hemisphere.

Keywords: Communication redundancy, electricity cogeneration, HMI and SCADA, smart RTU, wastewater management.

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