Wireless - Biwater Treatment Ltd

Wireless Telemetry makes a Splash across Rural East Anglia

Pennine Telecom ‘link’ up remote reservoirs

As water treatment works and reservoirs can often be located in remote areas, being able to control pumps and quickly check water levels and pressures can be a headache.

Traditionally, the problem has been solved using BT leased lines or low power UHF radios, however BT leased line can be very expensive and low power UHF radios can be unreliable. Both have the limitations associated with low bandwidth.

Biwater Treatment Limited, who design, construct and maintain water and wastewater treatment plants, came across a solution when they attended a Wireless seminar hosted by Pennine Telecom.

Steve Niebel, EICA Design Manager at Biwater Treatment Limited, said “In the past water companies have used low power UHF radio systems but these offer a low bandwidth and can be unreliable in certain weather conditions.”

A recent project at a water treatment works in rural East Anglia gave the Biwater ICA team an ideal opportunity to implement an innovative solution to a communications problem. The scheme required a control link between the main pumping station and a remote borehole. Although only 2 km away, the route crossed a high voltage power line, a main road and private property. The normal solutions of either a BT leased line or a low power radio link were ruled out due to cost, reliability and timescale issues.

The wireless solutions offered by Pennine had increased bandwidth and are not affected by adverse weather conditions. Biwater have installed a Motorola 400 connection, at the site in East Anglia, along with new CCTV and VoIP equipment.

The new wireless point to point link connects two sites which are 2km apart. The 10Mbps bandwidth is capable of carrying video and voice calls, as well as the vital information from the plant sensors.

Steve said “We are very impressed with Pennine Telecom. We wanted to use a company who had experience in this field and could work nationally, Pennine have delivered on both fronts, providing a full design and installation package for the radio, CCTV and VoIP. It has vastly improved communications between the sites and has proved to be very reliable with a 99.9% uptime.”