water pipeline. (108k){au}
Ninety years after the first water flowed from Perth's
Mundaring Weir to the dry Goldfields 600 kilometres away, a major new project has been completed. A team of local engineers have completed an ambitious plan to modernise
and fully automate the Perth to Kalgoorlie pipeline operations.
Kalgoorlie,(83k){au}600 kilometres east,
along the newly built Coolgardie Water Supply pipeline.
The pipeline was the vision of Charles Yelverton O'Connor, Chief Engineer of
Western Australia from 1891 to 1902, who managed what many people considered was
the impossible -- to pump 22,700 cubic metres of water from the plentiful supplies
of Mundaring Weir (East of Perth), lifting it 355 metres with only eight pumping
stations, and delivering it to the dry goldfield towns 600 kilometres away.This major engineering feat was treated with much scepticism by the press and politicians of the day whose unprecedented criticism of the project drove O'Connor to suicide a year before the pipeline became operational.
In a note found after his death, O'Connor reiterated his belief in the Kalgoorlie pipeline project and it's significance to the future growth of Western Australia.
It was a view supported by the then State Premier, Sir John Forrest, who anticipated the pipeline would not only supply water to the Goldfields but enable settlement and development of remote wheatbelt areas along the way.
In the 90 years since O'Connor's death, this belief has been vindicated and the Coolgardie Water Supply pipeline today supports rural populations and mining and agricultural developments over a wide area of Western Australia.
Over the years increasing demands have been placed upon the water resource supplied by the pipeline which have necessitated major changes in water pumping technology.
The pipeline's original steam driven pumping system has been replaced by
electrical pumps and, with pipeline offlakes added to service wheatbelt and
goldfield towns, the pumping system has developed some complex, hybrid features.
Ghooli Pumping Station(64k){au}
The control requirements, for example, differ from section to section along the
pipeline to Kalgoorlie.
In 1995, the Water Authority of Western Australia (WAWA) (now the Water Corporation) has completed an automation project to modernise pipeline operations and help ensure demands for service are met for many years to come.
ABB Power Transmission, a division of Asea Brown Boveri, was contracted by WAWA to automate this remarkable pipeline system. ABB Power Transmission Projects Division engaged Curtin University's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering to provide a senior academic as software manager and lead a team of computer engineering and computer technology graduates in the development of specialised custom built software. This unique relationship between industry and academia means that work originally planned to be done in Europe was completed in Perth.
Locating the bulk of the project in Western Australia enabled the team to create an effective 'Expert System' which encapsulates the knowledge necessary to control pipeline operations.
The computer based control system needed to incorporate not only the physically
measurable parameters of the pipeline such as water pressure, flow and storage
levels but also the specialised knowledge WAWA's engineers had of
consumer demand, physical limitations of the pipeline and cost constraints.
Koorarawalyee Tank(80k){au}
Until recently, engineers scheduled pumping requirements according to previous water demand trends but such scheduling cannot take into account unseasonal rainfall in the Goldfields. The effect of rainfall in January can, for example, result in a marked drop in regional water requirements.
Under the previous system, engineers had to redefine operational schedules to allow for varying weather conditions. An automated pumping system allows WAWA staff to more effectively monitor water usage and any significant changes in usage along all sections of the pipeline, and, therefore, to be able to control the supply of water to the various sections.
This allows for better long term planning of water requirements in the wheatbelt and Goldfield communities. In addition, by scheduling maximum pumping operations during off peak electrical charge periods, the cost of delivery to the consumer is minimised.
This article has been updated from:
Maynard, C.A. (1992) More Precious than Gold
Curtin Gazette Vol 5,No. 3 pp10-11
For more detail of the control system see:
Lowes, L., Wiese,I., Maynard,C.A. (1993) The Application of a Rule Based Expert System in the Control of a 700km Water Pipeline
Australian Journal of Instrumentation and Control Dec '93 pp4-10