Wastewater lift station surveillance and management – the easier, more cost-efficient, and more flexible way

 

Photo from lyonnaise-des-eaux.com

 

Need for a flexible multifunctional transmitter for lift station water level monitoring
Lyonnaise des Eaux’s team in Montgeron – a city situated in the southern Paris region – provides service for several lift stations for the local wastewater system. In 2004 the team decided to install the PR 4116 universal transmitter for water level monitoring at the individual stations. They needed a transmitter that could be used to program the pumps as well as indicate relay failure for practically every installation. The 4116 offered both functionalities.
In addition, the 4116 was chosen for easy installation into the existing cabinets, the five-year warranty, simple programming, and fair price.

 

Simplifying wiring and renovating cabinets ten years later
In 2014 the team found that some of the stations needed renovation. The pumping station probes were reacting to contact with litter and rain water, triggering the pumps to stop. Arnaud CHAMBON of Lyonnaise des Eaux decided on PR multifunctional transmitters and communication enablers for the renovation project:

 

“We needed to renovate but certainly also to simplify the cabinets at the Rue de Paris at Villeneuves St Georges. In one cabinet we had twenty PR 4116 and 4501 (replaced by PR 4510) and in another cabinet we had an additional fifteen”, Mr. Chambon explains and continues, “We replaced the existing probes with piezo probes and replaced the modules in the cabinets with a new set of PR 4116 universal transmitters with 4511 communication enablers clicked onto the front. The pumps were controlled by the PR modules using threshold and hysteresis functionality. This gave us a simpler and much more cost-efficient set-up… with less wiring.”

 

 

A glance into one of the cabinets.

 

Remote access to the installations provides better information and more flexible monitoring
The lift stations are controlled by a Sofrel PLC. After installing the 4511 communication enablers and connecting via Modbus, the team can now monitor the water level remotely. Before the renovation, the team had only access to water level information when standing at the cabinet:

 

“Before we had no remote information about the water level in the 35 stations – only the modules in the cabinets could provide this,” Mr. Chambon says and adds, “Now – without wiring – we have remote access to the data transmitted by the 4116 and we can program the modules as well. We have also saved on installation costs as one of the relays provides information twice – for Sofrel S550 tele-surveillance as well as for the back-up system in case the tele-monitoring fails. If the 4116 wasn’t able to perform two tasks, it would have been necessary to install two modules instead of one.”

 

Overall, the PR modules have made it easier for the team to manage the stations.

 

“Now we can monitor the water level in all the stations – and the fact that we can now tele-monitor them gives us more flexibility and better management of the stations,” Mr. Chambon conludes.

 

Acknowledgements: We sincerely thank Arnaud Chambon, Automaticien at Lyonnaise des Eaux, for agreeing to participate in this article.

 

Facts about Lyonnaise des Eaux – Sud Ile-de France

• 700 employees
• 1.350.000 inhabitants receiving drinking water
• 1.278.000 inhabitants benefitting from the waste-water utilities.

 

Top image source: lyonnaise-des-eaux.fr.