Project upgrades approved

Times Reporter     

 

As part of the 2014 Capital Budget council had approved two capital projects for EPCOR. One of the projects is for 50 per cent of the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) upgrades, and the remaining 50 per cent would be completed in 2015. 

Council had also approved a project to perform 50 per cent of the Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) upgrades for 2014, with the remaining 50 per cent also to be completed in 2015.

“This evening what we brought forward is a request to focus more so on the PLC upgrades this year. Rather than doing two projects in one year … we would do one project this year and the subsequent project next year, but our spending over the two years wouldn’t change. So rather than splitting it 50/50 over two years, we focus on one this year and the second one next year,” said Director of Operations and Engineering for the town Jesse Parker. 

EPOCR has requested that rather than completing 50 per cent of both projects in 2014, they instead would like to complete the PLC project in 2014 and the UPS project in 2015. The cost to complete the PLC project is $105,600, which is $18,100 more than the combined cost of the two projects approved. 

The plan is to essentially put in a hot standby, which would basically be on hand for when the existing PLC dies. 

“We are worried that if this were to fail, and the processor of the PLC were to fail, then we would be running somewhat blind at the Waste Water Treatment Plant. Its also important to know that it’s a hot standby, so what that means is this new PLC will be running in parallel and be kind of on idle in the background and if the current older one fails it switches automatically and we don’t get any interruption of service,” said Craig Bonneville, senior manager with EPCOR.  

The decision made in 2010 to continue to use the equipment installed when the Waste Water Treatment Plant was built was because it was still functioning at the time. Since then there have been some failures and EPCOR has managed to scrounge supplies from other facilities, but that is becoming less and less of an option. 

A motion was made and approved for the PLC project upgrade to be completed this year with the additional $18,100 to be funded from additional MSI grant funding.