Success Story: West Dundee, IL
West Dundee Uses a Flexible “SCADA Lite” for Remote Wastewater Flume
With a population of 7,686 (2020 Census data), West Dundee has managed to keep its quaintness and small-town feeling intact while still being considered a suburb of Chicago. West Dundee’s Water and Sewer Division operates the Village’s water system, which includes 3 deep-well water sources, 3 elevated water storage towers with a combined capacity of 2,750,000 gallons, 2 water treatment facilities that incorporate an ion exchange treatment process to improve the overall quality of the water, 46 miles of water mains and over 540 fire hydrants.
ABOUT WEST DUNDEE
"No more dozens of spreadsheets. With a single pane of glass for my water and wastewater data, my staff can now more easily trend data to explain patterns. We save truck rolls and labor with the WaterClick integrations as well."
Adam Peters
West Dundee Utilities Superintendent
Until recently, West Dundee, IL had a problem with access and timeliness of flow data from a remote wastewater metering flume. Because data had been retrieved manually from a shed in a cornfield using the paper chart recorder shown below on the left, the utility lacked the kind of real-time data that could show trends and important wastewater flow variations. By simply and inexpensively digitizing the existing meter and gaining instant access, West Dundee saves truck rolls and labor, responds quicker to flow events, and has the tools to explain changes in the data downstream.
AT A GLANCE
The Village of West Dundee serves over 7,300 residents and counts 2,600 sewage connections under its management. All village wastewater flow is sent to the Fox River Water Reclamation District (FRWRD) and is currently metered through a remote metering flume that locally displays flow rate and totalized flow at the remote metering station. The onsite chart recorder records flow rate and the totalizer keeps track of the totalized gallons.
Utilities Superintendent, Adam Peters, and his 3-person staff used to visit the site daily to record data manually, which only gave them a point-in-time snapshot of the data. Peters investigated having a full remote SCADA node installed, but at quoted costs of up to $15,000, it was way outside the budget for the Village.
PROBLEM ADDRESSED
Waterly, working in partnership with WaterClick Partner Blue Pillar and the Village, whose IIoT Gateway device securely connects industrial equipment to the Internet for trending and notification. With Waterly, Blue Pillar could assemble an affordable remote monitoring gateway package to transmit the data to the Cloud. The gateway is a cellular-based device that West Dundee connected in line with the existing paper chart recorder and metering equipment to provide a near real-time flow rate (every 5 minutes) and totalizer pulse reading in a one-way, encrypted cloud message packet. This data is then shared with Waterly's new integrated data platform called WaterClick, which then is also shared with FRWRD, facilitating more collaboration between the utilities department and the water district.
Within a few weeks of seeking a new solution, West Dundee had the remote monitoring gateway connected to its Parshall Flume metering device and reported flow rates. This new access to wastewater flow data allows the utilities to better address future issues quickly, improving resiliency to benefit the village’s residents. According to Superintendent Peters, now that they have near-real-time data, they can see the peaks and valleys in the flow that explains variations in data and associated fees. The data paints new pictures they didn’t have the ability to see before.
SOLUTION(S) USED
OUTCOMES
The new system provides the Village of West Dundee, the District at FRWRD, and other nearby towns with shared access to current data to closely monitor water levels before public safety can be impacted, and to understand the variations in daily and seasonal flow.
The Blue Pillar system was implemented quickly at a price that the Village could afford, and with the WaterClick integration, it was intuitive and easy for the team to access summary data in Waterly.
The trend data is now available to help explain billing anomalies, which could not be done before.
HOW MUCH DID IT COST?
$1500 upfront for equipment - Self-installable!
$750 annual service fee/year for WaterClick
The WaterClick platform allows Blue Pillar’s data to combine with the Village’s Waterly’s data, presenting a unified data picture for staff.
Availability of Village utility staff is no longer a constraint to having accurate data from the metering station. The project has been so successful that Superintendent Peters is planning to integrate other metering points into WaterClick with the Blue Pillar solution. Team members can spend more time on higher value projects to benefit the community.
Instead of a costly traditional SCADA solution, the Blue Pillar “SCADA Lite” system included a capital outlay of $1500 plus a small annual fee <$500. Labor savings are estimated at $3000 per year plus vehicle time and mileage resulting in less than 6 months ROI.