Instrumentation Monthly Test | Measurement | Control
Since 2010, Irrigation and Water have designed, installed, repaired and serviced a broad range of water engineering kit, providing expertise in water source and storage projects, pumping systems, residential, landscape livestock and sports irrigation, fountains and aeration. More here.
Their customer, Wood Hall Stud, delivers a comprehensive range of services for horse breeders and racehorse owners, including boarding, foaling, sales preparation, breaking and pre-training. The Stud is set in 700 acres of lush, green paddocks, a peaceful and secure environment for mares, foals and yearlings, complete with modern stabling barns, pens and a foaling unit. More here.
Water is supplied from a borehole on the estate, passed through a particulate cartridge filter, stored in four 10,000 litre water storage tanks and finally boosted out via a pump set and UV treatment to the usage sites.
The system creates potable water for the stud, the arable farm that supplies horse feed, farm offices and a number of houses on the estate. In order to maintain Wood Hall’s standards and reputation, it is essential that fresh water supplies are plentiful and reliable.
The particulate filter gradually fills, slowing the flow of water from the borehole to the storage tanks.
Prior to the installation of Powelectrics remote monitoring technology, filters would be changed on a scheduled maintenance plan, based on historical usage.
Due to variations in water usage, occasionally tank levels would run low before this happened, causing a period of up to 48 hours where water supply was restricted, whilst the filter was changed and the connected tanks had time to refill. During this recovery period, expensive emergency water supplies would be needed and certain activities had to be postponed.
Irrigation and Water had already delivered irrigation solutions and maintained the borehole and pump sets for the estate. They were asked to recommend a cost-effective solution.
Ashley Proctor, Irrigation and Water MD, knew Powelectrics from other livestock-related projects.
His solution was to use Powelectrics’ Metron4 telemetry device to measure various parameters, sending data and alerts via Powelectrics’ MetronView cloud.
Now, there are two float switches in one of the tanks. As the tanks are balanced, this effectively measures the levels in all the tanks.
Alarms are sent when tanks drop to 50% capacity, indicating the need to check the filter. If the filter is not blocked, this would prompt further investigation into possible leakage or unexpectedly heavy use of water in some part of the estate.
There are also alerts when the tanks are empty, which triggers the pump to switch off.
A pressure switch on the pump set also generates alerts, again indicating the need for maintenance, potentially for pump trip due to lack of power.
As occasional external power outages are a local issue, the Metron4 device is installed with a battery back-up. Metron4 reports when this a switch to back-up has occurred, alerting the estate team not only to pump issues, but to more general issues associated to loss of external power across the 700 acre estate and the need to engage the on-site generator.
Ashley says, “The Powelectrics kit has proved itself on numerous occasions. Their Admin team is extremely efficient and the tech support has been fantastic. When we first used the Metron technology, tech support talked us through the whole set up. Everything was very clear and very quick. We wouldn’t hesitate to use this kit again for similar applications.”
Since the installation of this m2m solution, there have been a number of alerts, which prompted timely action. Alerts go to Irrigation and Water and local Grounds Maintenance and Operation Managers, who have ensured that water has never run out on site. Filter changes are now done when needed, rather than on a scheduled basis, creating time for other activity.
Metron4 can use external power or be battery or solar powered for use in remote and rural locations. Metron4 telemetry hardware supports 2G & 4G, offers operational temperatures – 25 to +65°C for global deployment and comes in an IP67 enclosure.
MetronView is a secure, scalable, intuitive and customisable cloud delivering sensor data & alerts on any web-enabled device. It also offers a common API to allow data to be drawn into other
Powelectrics offers 30 years’ experience in sensing and remote monitoring. The company’s ‘connected sensor’ solutions are employed in many industries including chemicals, pharmaceuticals, Adblue, fuels, oils, LPG, lubricants, food and beverage, waste & recycling, landfill & leachate, agriculture, utilities, pumping and environment, rail and security.
For further information or to discuss your application, please call Powelectrics on +44 (0)1827 310 666, use this contact form or send an email to sales@powelectrics.co.uk 
