Environmental Monitoring Taiwan

Project Introduction: Jiaxian Weir is located in the Kaohsiung County in southern Taiwan, about 450 meters upstream from the Jiaxian Bridge. The weir is an extensive facility of the Nanhua Reservoir used to channel water from Qishan Creek into the Nanhua Reservoir, which not only helps to alleviate possible overflow of the creek during the rainy season but also increases water in the Nanhua Reservoir to meet municipal and industrial demands in Kaohsiung and Tainan. The original equipment that helped control the Jiaxian Weir was damaged by flooding brought by the devastating Typhoon Morakot in 2009. It was important to restore the facility before the next typhoon season to prevent a repeat of the disaster. If it was not completed in time, the construction work might have been destroyed by another flood.

System Requirements:

The sluice gate control system plays a critical role in monitoring rainfall and water levels in the Qishan Creek so as to transfer overflowing water to the Nanhua Reservoir. The sluice gates will have to operate normally under preset conditions without any errors, or it would become disastrous during a flooding.

Under deadline and weather pressure the contractors of the project, Sheng Fu Engineering Corporation together with Yi Kung Technology, decided to use Advantech’s EKI series of fiber-optic converters can be built a fiber-optic communications network, which is reliable enough to satisfy the long-distance data transmissions in the sluice gate monitoring control system and operate stably and reliably even under harsh environments. They also decided to use Advantech’s PAC products for the monitoring control system of sluice gates, which can measure, record and store data very quickly and control and maintain the system remotely.

Project Implementation:

	EKI-2528	8-port Unmanaged Industrial Ethernet Switch
	EKI-2541S	10/100T(X) to Single-Mode SC Type Fiber Optic Industrial Media Converter
	APAX-5570	PC-based Controller with Celeron M CPU
	APAX-5520	Micro PAC with XScale CPU
	APAX-5017	12-ch Analog Input Module
	APAX-5040	24-ch Digital Input Module
	APAX-5046	24-ch Digital Output Module
	APAX-5343	Power Supply for APAX-5570 Series

System Diagram:

System Description:
To keep a close watch on the amount of rainfall and the status of the weir so as to open or close the sluice gates precisely to prevent flooding, the monitoring control system for Jiaxian Weir is a multi-redundant system, which ensures the continuity and reliability of operation and minimizes downtime and possible losses resulting from a breakdown. This monitoring control system watches the water level and water flow of the river, tests turbidity in water, controls the degree of gate openness and monitors and transmits weather information. Should anything abnormal happen, it would initiate a warning and alert system, broadcasting and notifying downstream residents of the situation.

Advantech’s APAX-5000 dual redundant control system carries out the mission of monitoring the river and the weir. The dual redundant topology not only ensures the stability and reliability of uninterruptible operation of the system but also helps to get hold of instant information of weather, water level and water turbidity, which enables the effective control of the sluice gates and introduces abundant and clear water into the weir for further use, making every drop count.

Meanwhile, Advantech APAX controllers provide I/O modules featuring high point counts, flexible combination and hot-swapping, which have made it very convenient for us to map out system architecture, set I/O modules, and test and maintain the system. On the other hand, the remote monitoring and control functionalities enabled the engineers to keep an eye on water level and flow metering, sluice gate openness and water quality, and maintain and control the system with ease.

Combined APAX-5570 and APAX-5520 to be a dual controller platform are not only separating HMI and SCADA tasks, but also providing a reliable control system. The dual controllers are occupied with separate tasks, with APAX-5520KW responsible for controlling pumps and other equipment, while APAX-5570 carries out communications and data process systems. Two sets of dual control hosts were installed to build redundancy, that is, when one set of controllers is down, the other set will take over the work immediately. Furthermore, they adopted two of APAX-5343 power supply modules to build dual power supply redundancy. APAX-5017, 12-ch Analog Input, is in-charge-of the data acquisition of water level and flow metering of Qishan Creek, temperature, rainfall, wind direction and humidity of meteorology. APAX-5040, 24-ch digital input, takes charge of the data acquisition of pump status and water quality. And digital output, APAX-5046, is responsible for controlling the sluice gate openness..

Conclusion:
Under this system implementation, Advantech’s products have more than met the requirements of this hydro-engineering project, helping the sluice gate monitoring control system operate smoothly and meeting the high standards we had set to prevent floods and disasters.