Case Study – Monitoring & Control of drinking water wells, Israel

Background:

In the Lev-Hasharon area in central Israel, there are a large number of wells that were intended for pumping groundwater for purposes of drinking and irrigation of orchards and farmlands, which were in use for many years. In recent years, however, these water sources gradually decreased, due to the decline in water quality, and the drying up of large sections of the orchards; some orchards have even been abandoned.

In the year 20 , RealiteQ was asked to provide a monitoring and control solution for a new project, which utilized these water sources, and also channelled the unused water to remote areas according to demand, by using a new infrastructure that channels and collects the water into reservoirs and pumps it to remote areas.

Project Description:

The project was carried out in two areas; in each of the areas a reservoir was created, which was filled up by water pumped from water wells in its vicinity. Each well was used for routine irrigation of farmlands, and at times when irrigation was not required, the water was pumped into the nearby reservoir, and from there supplied to more remote farmlands, according to demand.

A control panel was installed in each well, with cellular monitoring units (R3.0), a control unit  for collecting data and controlling the end equipment that is present onsite.

RealiteQ’s monitoring and control system enables changing the operation of each well, as required, when it is not needed for local irrigation, and channelling its water to fill up the reservoir; this is done by synchronizing all the wells so that they operate in a coordinated system, and are only activated when there is a demand to fill up the remote reservoir.

Unique Capabilities:

Building a central real-time monitoring and control system – that is able to collect data simultaneously from all sites, and, by using software in the central controller, is able to synchronize the information and operate the system accordingly – was an essential condition in order to control a number of water sources that are distant from one other and also to fill up a central reservoir, thus providing water to near and remote fields, according to specific independent demands. The RealiteQ system, which is based on real-time data and a central server to which all the units are connected, enabled carrying out the project in good time and at attractive costs, since there was no need to build a special communications infrastructure or to invest in separate telemetric and SCADA systems. (RealiteQ is an integrated system from end to end.)

Summary and Results:

This project reviewed is very complicated – optimizing the operation of the wells in coordination with filling up the reservoirs posed a technological challenge.
 

In the first stage, only the operation of the wells was implemented, regardless of the water level in the reservoir, and only after that was it possible to see all the wells’ operations on one screen – the logic was refined and synchronization between the wells was carried out according to the water level in the reservoir.

Currently, after a number of years, the project fills up and irrigates extensive areas and succeeds in supplying and selling large amounts of water, which were not utilized previously, with minimal operation and maintenance costs, thanks to the capabilities of remotely monitoring and fully controlling all the systems that are dispersed over a large area.