Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/1006919
The Talk: opinion SPONSORED BY ABB EXPERT VIEW ANDY PRESTON, UK DRIVES PRODUCT MANAGER, ABB The hidden gems inside an AC drive Dismissing variable speed drives (VSD) as nothing more than motor controllers is to miss the huge cost- saving potential built within the product P anels containing pump system control gear are used extensively throughout the water industry. Within these panels are VSDs and a host of additional components including thermostats used for controlling cabinet fans to save standby losses, timer relays, contactors and door-mounted HMIs. The panel may include a moving iron meter indicating amps or volts instead of true process values such as water flow rates. And it might include a mini PLC for decision-making or for controlling the system to behave at different times of the day, or to monitor variables in the field, against which decisions are made. Yet all these components, and more, are o…en not needed as they are already built within the VSD. You don't need the thermostat (saving around £200) as the drive will tell you when its own fans are running, thereby switching on cabinet cooling fans automatically. Timer relays (saving around £180) are not required as the drive has a real- time clock, from which timers can be set to either start or stop an application running, depending on operating conditions. You no longer need the contactor as the drive has built-in safe torque off (STO); a SIL 3 PL e stop function that is safer than contactors. Using the drive's fieldbus means you can utilise un-used drive I/O to gather telemetry onto the fieldbus system, without having to purchase additional remote I/O stations. The VSD removes the need for external HMI displays to be cut into the door of cabinets. Today's VSD keypad offers 21 variables, displayed via graphs, charts and meter readings that speak the language of any application. There is no need for any analogue meters as the keypad has a view that looks like an analogue moving iron meter, scaled and labelled in the correct customer units. The keypad negates the need for cabinet furniture such as start/stop buttons, as these can be programmed into the keypad. Costs are saved as the sheet metal worker no longer needs to cut holes for an external HMI. Text editing means that if you are pumping water, for instance, you don't need to read the motor's speed in rpm but rather the actual flow rate in litres per second with scaling factors. The VSD can be customised to present the language of the application or industry and change warnings and trips into plain, simple language. This eliminates the need to connect an HMI to Modbus, saving substantial costs. It also simplifies technical support as the language of the customer is one the drives engineer can easily relate too. An OEM using this facility can now dispatch a true customer-ready drive package. Users need to ask: What are they doing with the VSD? Why install a host of additional components in the panel when they are already contained in the drive? Why struggle to manage the cabinet cost, when understanding what's inside the drive could save up to 50 per cent of the cost of cabinet components? 6 | AUGUST 2018 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk "[Many components] are o en not needed as they are already built within the variable speed drive" JAMES BROCKETT, EDITOR, WWT Open innovation Bringing people of different backgrounds and expertise together is the best way of cracking the puzzle of meaningful innovation I recently had the pleasure of attending Northumbrian Water's Innovation Festival at Newcastle Racecourse – a week-long event that has doubled in size since its inception last year and that is quickly establishing itself as the water industry's answer to Glastonbury. In the sustained period of hot weather that we've been experiencing, it was a pleasant environment to spend a Friday, and the sideshows and wellbeing exhibits provided plenty of distractions, but the o…en mind-boggling work that was going on was the main attraction. The scope and ambition of the challenges tackled by the various design sprints was impressive, but what really stood out was the sheer number of different companies and organisations involved. It's remarkable that so many people from so many firms, sectors and locations were willing and able to come together in order to think creatively about how to solve problems that are central to the water industry and the environment and society at large. Hats off to Northumbrian for putting on such a good show. Chief executive Heidi Mottram told me at the event that the company believes in 'Open Innovation' and it was easy to see on the day I was there what this means in practice. While Northumbrian will benefit in the form of the innovative ideas generated and the year-round projects springing from them, I'm pretty sure they won't be the only ones, and many other attendees will have taken something back to their organisations that they can work on for their own businesses and customers. Less enlightened companies might have restricted the guestlist out of concern about competition and access, but the 'come one come all' policy provided the right environment for a true festival of ideas. It's an example of collaboration which is not a zero sum game – showing that just because one party gains it does not mean that another has to lose out. Instead, by getting together and sharing expertise and ideas we can all be winners. You can read more about some of the ideas that sprung from the festival in our report starting on page 12. The rest of this issue of WWT also has a strong innovation theme – from our look at the Online Zetasizer project at Severn Trent (p22), which is setting a new standard for the way the water industry approaches coagulation, to our Innovation Zone special on water networks on page 27, which explores the way that new technology is helping to reduce bursts and supply interruptions. The current dry spell is a reminder of the sustained challenge from climate change that the water industry is facing. But as long as the ideas continue to flow, and the industry is able to attract and enthuse people of different talents, there's no limit to how human ingenuity can step up to even the biggest challenges.