Lausitz
Weißkeißel, Germany
Application: Municipal Water Supply
“A connection that is always safe”, is the promise made by the slogan of the municipal company Niesky GmbH.
This is also how the company interprets its task of supplying water.
The reliability and safety of the supply are the focal point of all the activities of the SWN waterworks. The over 10,000 users of drinking water of the supply company located between Görlitz and Weißwasser in Lower Silesia-Upper Lusatia in Germany, expect a constant and reliable supply of drinking water.
The decrease in consumption increases the pressure on costs
This also applies to the municipalities of Hohendubrau, Horka, Quitzdorf am See and Kodersdorf. With the town of Niesky, these municipalities are supplied each year with a quarter of a million cubic metres of drinking water from 6 sources of their own, by means of 5 pumping stations equipped with 15 pumps, a distribution network about 200 km long and 4,396 connections.
Thanks to frugal consumption and a constant fall in the population, the water consumption is being reduced; this leads to a greater caution in costs, which can be achieved only with a system that focuses on saving.
We must be able to rely on our partners
The technicians in charge of the waterworks are the engineer Hartmut Barth and the director Torsten Eichler with their five assistants in the sector that supplies drinking water. “In comparison with large waterworks, we have a very small staff. We therefore count on the reliability of our partners,” says Hartmut Barth, Director of Technical Services, describing the situation. The pressure on costs and the lack of resources oblige us, when necessary, to rely on the service offered by local suppliers. That is what happened in July 2007, when an old booster system, composed of standard pumps and controlled by external frequency converters, suddenly stopped working and had to be replaced in a very short time.
Prompt availability is decisive in choosing the brand
Within the space of just one week, the pump dealers Lausitz of Weißkeißel came to our aid with a booster system produced by Xylem-Lowara, a company with which we had already had an excellent experience, having used 6 other pumping systems with Lowara pumps. The logical consequence was that, two months later, we equipped all three pumps in the system with frequency converters of the HYDROVAR® series. Simply applied on the standard motor, this regulator does not need any complicated programming or expensive assembly.
Flow rates suited to requirements and low running costs
The HYDROVAR® regulator allows the flow rate of each pump to be adapted to the exact real demand for drinking water by means of its motor speed. At Niesky, in this way, water can be fed into the mains both through the old water tower and directly, with the pressure regulation. The supply is thus assured at any time, even during maintenance or cleaning of the water tower, without the users noticing any difference. The “soft” start and stop functions prevent extremes in pressure and the automatic exchange of the pumps guarantees uniform operation of all sets.
Superior control technology increases reliability
Thanks to the use of the HYDROVAR® frequency converter, the pumps not only “communicate” with one another, but can also be integrated into the waterworks control centre. The theoretical values can thus be set and changed at any time in the control centre, and the most important operating data can be consulted and recorded. The system immediately recognises any faults and reports them by cell phone to the service centre so that they can be promptly eliminated. It is also possible to plan maintenance intervals in time, which increases reliability and reduces maintenance costs.