Rainbow MWD awards contract to upgrade SCADA system

The Rainbow Municipal Water District approved a contract with Freedom Automation, Inc., to upgrade the hardware and software for the district’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.

The 5-0 Rainbow board vote Oct. 28 authorized Rainbow general manager Tom Kennedy to sign a contract with the Oceanside company for up to $115,000 for the integration and installation of the SCADA hardware and software while also appropriating an additional $35,000 from the district’s Capital Projects Fund to complement the $80,000 appropriated during the budget process.

“It’s just to upgrade our older XP system,” Kennedy said. “We need to upgrade the system so we can retain our service to the customers.”

Rainbow’s SCADA system sends commands to the district’s remote sites and reports system status to Rainbow’s operations staff. Several computers comprise the SCADA system. Rainbow currently has three servers dedicated to the SCADA system: one for water, one for wastewater, and a backup. Those servers were installed in 2009 with the Rockwell RS View software which utilizes Windows XP.

Microsoft Corporation no longer supports Windows XP. Rainbow staff investigated replacement software options and expressed preference for a system which can incorporate existing SCADA sites and new upgrades as necessary, but the new SCADA software version is not compatible with Rainbow’s existing system and legacy hardware.

The updated hardware and software will consist of three Dell Poweredge R250 rack mount servers, two licenses of the ignition SCADA software by Inductive Automation, and full program integration into Rainbow’s system. “Ongoing maintenance on this software is way cheaper than the stuff we’re using now,” Kennedy said. “It is the same or better quality at a much lower price.”

The Inductive Automation software has a non-proprietary historical data base server, an open platform for customizable screen development, and secure and flexible access to SCADA data. It can be used on a variety of platforms including mobile ones, and since there is no license fee for SCADA clients use of the software can be expanded within the organization without additional fees.

The Freedom Automation scope of work will provide the three Dell servers, install and configure the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system on the new servers, install and configure the new structured query language (SQL) server software for use by the ignition software and historical logging, install and configure the ignition software, re-create the alarm dialog and notification system with the Ignition built-in package, configure Rainbow’s computers and set up remote access, and provide and configure two ATCOM voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) to private branch exchange (PBX) phone converters for the integrated alarm notification.