The risk of storm water leaking into sewers and increasing waste water treatment prompted a Finnish municipality to install Ethernet networked ACS inverter drives from ABB to prevent the waste system becoming overloaded and sewage being forced back into properties.

To address this, two remote waste water pumping stations were upgraded with ABB inverters and a remote monitoring system was installed to allow operators to monitor the volume of fluids being pumped and therefore detect when storm water leaks into the system.

These stations utilise drives in master/follower configuration fitted with intelligent pump control (IPC) software with level control and anti-jam functions. Level control randomly varies the holding tank’s surface level to prevent sediment build-up on the walls. Anti-jam performs preventive maintenance on the pump by running cleaning cycles.

Intelligent Ethernet module

One upgraded pumping stations is equipped with ABB’s intelligent Ethernet module, NETA-01, for remote access, monitoring and real time diagnostics. Users access the drives via the Internet using a LAN or modem connection. The module’s web pages show the status of the system and provide access to the drives’ parameters, fault loggers and data loggers.

The monitoring system eliminates the need to visit the pumping station for routine monitoring purposes. At the pumping station the combination of preventive maintenance performed by the ABB industrial drives with IPC, and remote monitoring, has eliminated unplanned maintenance and significantly reduced maintenance costs.

The operators can easily monitor the volume of fluids pumped through the system, and thereby detect if storm water is leaking into the waste water system.

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