Telemetry in an Automated Water Supply Control System

Abstract

The White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) Water Supply Control System (WSCS) controls and monitors the water wells, tanks and booster pumps located at the southern end of the missile range. Figure 1 is an overview of the WSMR water supply system. The WSCS provides water for approximately 90 square miles of the 3,700 square mile missile range. The WSCS was designed and installed in 1990 and in need of upgrading and repair. The system was evaluated and found to be only moderately functional. The WSCS consists of an IBM compatible personal computer (PC) based user interface, located at the WSMR Water Plant and Fire Dept. and industrial-type computers called Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) based stations at the Water Plant, water wells and tanks. The stations communicate over a 400 MHz radio half-duplex link. The serial message utilizes the Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) and Block Check Character (BBC) type of error checking. The Master station controls pumping by downloading pump settings to the slave stations. The slave stations upload data to the master such as tank level, pump status, energy usage, gallons of water pumped and various alarms. The system was analyzed and the design was found to be sound. The system did require improvements. These improvements include adding surge suppressors, software upgrades, absolute reading flow rate sensors, and providing adequate environmental cooling for the control system. Procedures for periodic maintenance and calibration of the sensors and schedules for radio equipment maintenance were also developed. Software modifications to reduce WSMR energy usage by reducing pumping during peak energy demand times are being integrated into the WSCS. The peak energy demand times are determined by historical energy usage data.