EGLV is the combination of Emschergenossenschaft, Germany’s first water management organization and Lippeverband comprising the two public-sector entities under a single organizational structure and today represents the largest waste water management company and operator of waste water treatment plants in Germany.  The waste water systems operated by EGLV comprise roughly 800 distributed plants and systems, including 59 waste water treatment plants and 546 pump stations. Many of these plants have their own process control or SCADA systems that are maintained locally. The target of the customer was to create a future-proof foundation for the service and maintenance of the process control systems in its plants with managing process control systems and IT/OT networks using a holistic approach. That is why EGLV has initiated modernization projects for the virtualization, standardization, and centralization of all process control systems.

For the virtualization project, the team at EGLV developed a blueprint that also drew on experience from another water and wastewater utility based in the neighboring Netherlands, at Water Betriev Limburg (WBL). Also on board was Siemens, which has a long-standing partnership with EGLV in the fields of automation and process control technology. This early collaboration helped to optimally utilize the available know-how and facilitated a smooth transition to the new system. EGLV and Siemens have been successfully collaborating for many years on process automation projects, and this partnership also paid off during the virtualization of the process control system, realized by implementing of process control system Simatic PCS 7 (proof-of-concept) and the corresponding control module types of the PCS 7 Water Templates, a library of standard engineering templates that offer functionalities specifically for the water industry as well as industry-specific attributes. The new automation concept for the plants requires only S7-410(E) controllers on the sites, with decentral IO stations and no local Operator Stations. The Operator Stations for all plants automated with PCS 7 are in a central datacenter on virtual environments and the S7 connections to the S7-410(E) are established over public and private networks using VPN technology. This innovative connection solution was specifically developed by EGLV and Siemens to enable a secure, reliable, and cost-effective way of connecting to the distributed plants and systems.  
The first plants have already been migrated to the central process control system and the virtual environment. The same systems will gradually be implemented in other plants. This approach will allow EGLV to limit the investment costs. The next migration projects will also include large plants processing waste water for the equivalent of a population of more than 500,000. 

The customer is open for integration of innovative solutions and is currently testing further solutions such as web-based process control system PCS neo and digital twin technology with PlantSight to make the performance of its plants and processes even more efficient.