Pumping system prevents flood

A year on from its installation, a remotely operated pneumatic water pumping system from pneumatics firm Festo has kept large parts of Guernsey Water’s storage and production facilities dry during extreme meteorological conditions.

Torrential rain in February of this year caused widespread damage to much of the island’s homes and businesses, however the Marais Stream pumping station, which had recently been upgraded, emerged virtually unscathed, a Festo statement said.

The pumping station was almost entirely upgraded to counter ongoing problems with heavy rainfall and flooding, said Andy Benstead, a water production manager at Guernsey Water.

“The equipment is much bigger, more reliable, easier to control and we can now pump up to 1,000 litres a second,” Benstead said.

As part of the project, Festo supplied Guernsey Water with three pneumatically operated penstocks, driven by linear actuators, to isolate water flow.

The entire system is run by Festo’s CPX remotely operated control system. The site itself is unmanned and is controlled via the SCADA system from the Guernsey Water offices located five miles from the water pumping station.

“The CPX platform is a complete automation solution that integrates a wide choice of pneumatic and electrical, analogue and digital I/O,” said Festo business development manager Tony Gillard.

“CPX systems configured for specific requirements are delivered pre-built, tested and ready for installation, enabling system integrators to meet tight deadlines and budgets.

“For additional flexibility, the CPX platform can operate as either a self-contained industrial PLC, or as a local unit on a Fieldbus or Industrial Ethernetbased distributed system. In addition, a wide choice of I/O and connector modules makes interfacing to process sensors and actuators easy.”