Project Profiles
Northville, MI Case Study
The City of Northville is a community of about 7,000 people in suburban Detroit. The city needed to do something to address the rate increases they were paying for their water. The original system was still working reliably, but they knew that upgrading to current control technologies could provide a lot of finacial and operation benefits.
Reducing costs through improved control were only the beginning of benefits. "Healy-Ruff really took this system above and beyond its original intent," said Steve Heidt, Assistant Director of Public Works. "They proposed the icontrolTM solution-offering me full control, monitoring, data and alarming capabilities." The icontrol solution seamlessly integrates true local PLC control and true SCADA functionality with secure remote access. However, rather than the huge capital and engineering investments typically associated with SCADA, all the functionality is provided to Northville for a montly service fee. icontrol also manages and maintains all of the technologies (communications, hardware, software) for the system.
"We went from significant double-digit annual increases to a reduction of over 10% in our rates from the City of Detroit." said Steve. When considering wages, overtime, mileage and other cost factors, eliminating 75-90 trips is now saving the City of Northville more than $10,000 anually. "The investment in the control system upgrade has already paid for itself!"
Allegan, MI Case Study
Allegan, MI wastewater sytem includes 13 lift stations that pump to an activated sludge-based treatment plant. They recently implemented a major upgrade of their control system using a web-hosted SCADA solution. The new system integrates open-architecture PLC-based control at the plant. The system integrates the old and the new with 7 "legacy" RTUs and 6 new lift station PLC based RTUs.
In addition to reducing operating expenses by more than $15,000 annually, The City of Allegan has experienced many operational benefits by implementing a hosted-SCADA solution, including full SCADA and PLC functionality available via remote access from any PC.
