Dalriada Water has selected Siemens to provide and maintain all equipment across the water treatment infrastructure for Northern Ireland Water. Dalriada Water is a consortium made up of Aecom Design Build (previously Earth Tech), Kelda Water Services and Farrans. It won a 25-year contract to design, build, finance and operate a large proportion of the water treatment infrastructure for Northern Ireland Water, and enlisted Siemens to provide and maintain all equipment across the network. Siemens offered a fieldbus solution for use in the project. The configuration used involved both new and proven technologies, integrating Profinet and Profibus across the plant. Using the S7-400 controller allowed a Profinet ring to be installed around the plant, giving all the advantages of industrial Ethernet at the plant level, but with real-time capabilities, and then links were installed down to Profibus, which was used in local areas for remote I/O and motor control. The networked solution allows for operators and engineers to access the site remotely, via Scada software installed onto a laptop. An S7-416F/PN failsafe controller and failsafe ET200S distributed I/O were installed, allowing Profisafe to be used for the safety communications. This allowed a single network to be installed for standard and safety communications around the plant. In addition, the safety I/O was connected to go straight back to the PLC, meaning that faults could be identified more easily, improving safety.
