Electricity and Control May 2021

CONTROL SYSTEMS + AUTOMATION

Clean water on tap for rural Botswana

The Thune Dam and water treatment plant contribute to improving water security in Botswana’s Central District.

For the first time, residents in the rural Bobirwa Sub-district in Botswana’s Central District now have access to safe and clean drinking water on tap.With automation and electrical engineering by Siemens Solution Partner, Moreflow, a new water treatment plant delivers 11 million litres of this precious resource to the region every day.

L ike many countries in Africa, Botswana has been battling water shortages for decades, a situation aggravated by climate change. The Central District is a semi-arid region that is especially susceptible to periodic drought. Botswana also has a growing population and a strong economy, which together drive increased water consumption. Over the past years, several dams have been built in the country to improve water supply security – among them, the Thune Dam.

Partner Moreflow (Pty) Ltd, headquartered in Francistown, Botswana, supplied the automation and electrical equipment and services. The scope of supply for the project included the medium- and low-voltage electrical system as well as drive components and process instrumentation. The company also designed and implemented a com- prehensive package for plant automation and monitoring. A key aspect of the project was linking remote systems in the villages to the central WinCC system via UHF (ul- tra high frequency) radio, which offers a cost-effective and low-maintenance connection even in very remote locations. “This way, the operators in the central control room can view the entire system, including the distributed pump sta- tions and storage tanks,” says Mike Tearnan, Director at Moreflow. “With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, digital solutions based on reliable remote connections have prov- en especially beneficial, as the automation systems and processes can be monitored and controlled without staff having to be at the site.” An integrated solution All Siemens systems are engineered using the Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) Portal. This allows for seamless configuration of all devices from just one software platform. “It is so simple that we can easily configure projects in 40 percent less time than used to be the case. And if customers have last-minute changes, they can be implemented across all devices in the network with no trouble,” Tearnan notes. A further advantage is that as well as offering a broad range of options, the integrated solution helps ensure a secure supply of spare parts over a plant’s lifecycle.

A comprehensive package For the Thune Dam water treatment plant, Siemens Solution

The reservoir, with a planned capacity of 90 million m 3 , feeds this water treatment plant downstream from the dam.

6 Electricity + Control MAY 2021