Reducing energy consumption - ABB wireless irrigation solution helps Spanish farmers
Last updated 21/09/2009 08:40:56
Reducing energy consumption - ABB wireless irrigation solution helps Spanish farmers
Power and automation technology group ABB has helped to save enough water to meet the annual needs of 2.3m people with a wireless irrigation solution in western Spain.
Further more the ABB solution has helped thousands of farmers in region to reduced energy consumption by 30% and improved agriculture productivity by 25%.
Before farmers would drive up to 40km to irrigate their land. Water valves would be opened by hand, and farmers would have to remain on site until it was time to close them. Many farmers could only irrigate their crops during the day because of the travelling distances and lose water to evaporation, instead of irrigating at night when conditions are ideal.
Costs were high from pumping water during peak daytime power tariffs and charges set by the farmers' cooperative association, representing the 8,500 farmers, for the volume consumed of water use.
The ABB solution controls the irrigation system for 10,700 plots of land in a 210 square-kilometre belt of prime agricultural land in the Zujar Canal region of western Spain, where local farmers grow sweet corn, tomatoes, olives, rice and a variety of other fruits and vegetables.
The solution is based on ABB's Neptuno 4H wireless irrigation system which uses state-of-the-art ABB remote terminal units (RTUs) and the general packet radio service (GPRS) telecommunications network to provide a highly flexible and low-cost remote-controlled solution for small to large-scale irrigation projects.
Some 7,900 (RTUs) control the 10,700 sets of water valves and counters. Powered by small solar panels, they communicate wirelessly with a central ABB SCADA control center using a private and secure wide area network (WAN) system built on the GPRS network.
This enables each of the 8,500 users to program the solution so that each crop receives the optimal amount of water at the correct time of day and when tariffs are most economical. Parameters can be securely accessed and modified by remote using a mobile phone or Internet web browser.
As a result, the farmers no longer have to travel to their land each day, and they receive alarms and maintenance messages on their mobile phones and computers.
Users can open and close the valves remotely, read pressure and water counters, monitor water consumption and water flow, execute up to four irrigation programs a day based on time intervals and/or water volume supplied, and receive alarms and maintenance messages.
The system can be expanded with features such as video surveillance, reservoir and gate monitoring, water quality control, weather information and irrigation recommendations with automatic adjustments according to area and crop, mobile phone payments, etc.
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