Field Trip!!!

So my partner, Greta and I took a field trip to a great little hydro site in Wapinger Falls, NY. Harry and Sarah made us feel incredibly welcome as they walked us through all of the cool stuff they're doing. They own three sites and have really taken great steps to make everything consistent and usable. Their focus was on automation and remote monitoring and they've really done a fantastic job.

The first thing Sarah showed us was the more than 16 networked surveillance cameras that they can access right through their iPad. These cameras are set up at all their sites and are a combination of static cameras and Pan/Tilt/Zoom (PTZ) cameras. The PTZ cameras they are using are top-of-the-line sony cameras with 26x optical zoom which allows them to use one camera to monitor both overall spaces and individual gauges on a panel! Very nice setup and something we're looking to do at our sites as well.

The Wapinger conference room. PHS has got to up it's game!

The next thing Sarah showed us was the PLC control panels they had put in. Instead of a PC running something like InduSoft, Sarah is using a HMI touch panel to interface with the PLC. Their system is from Beijer Electronics and is a stand alone hardware/software solution that includes networking, remote access, reporting and control. These touch panels are completely customizable and programmable via C# which is appealing.

Two of the Beijer panels from two different sites. Each panel is customized to look like the machines at the site. 

Turns out that PLCDirect has their own panels now called C-More HMI Panels (Get it?!). These panels would theoretically be designed more specifically to work with the PLCDirect PLC but they don't look as high quality and there's no information on how they're programmed. PLCDirect's competitor to InduSoft looks, if possible, to be even worse. It's possible that the C-More panels would be worse as well. I need to do more research.

Harry and Sarah were awesome to us and the Wapinger site is really a show piece. There's an onsite apartment, a party room with dance floor, salad bar and soda fountain and all sorts of neat touches. I'd love to turn one of the PHS sites into a show piece.

The network closet wasn't a show piece though...

Whereas this old panel (not in use) really was!

After Wapinger, we all went to Leppert-Nutmeg to see how generators get refurbished. These guys had just refurbished one of our generators and we thought we'd stop in for a tour. Unfortunately the guy who was supposed to give us the tour was busy. Instead, the president of the company grabbed us and gave us an amazing tour of their facilities. We were very impressed, not just by the breadth of services they offer, but of the specific knowledge that the president of the company shared with us. He knew about every project in there, what was being done and what state it was in. He shared some mind boggling stories about some tidal generators that were never designed to be serviced... Turns out they needed to be but it's just not possible. Everything had to be scrapped instead of repaired.

I wasn't able to take any pictures here but it was awesome and I wouldn't hesitate to work with them again.