Irrigation automation for DMT - Madinat Zayed City Parks

About this project

The Department of Municipalities and Transport commissioned the design and construction of parks across several districts, and Almafor delivered the irrigation pumping control and telemetry as a specialist subcontractor.

Twelve pumping stations were involved: seven three phase stations at 5.5 kW and five single phase stations at 2.5 kW. Each received a pump control panel carrying an RTU and a connection back to SCADA, so that a network of small unstaffed stations spread across a city can be seen and operated from one place.

Small stations are not simple stations. A 2.5 kW single phase pump panel in an unshaded park has to survive an Abu Dhabi summer, report reliably over whatever communications the site can get, and be maintainable by somebody who has never seen it before and will arrive with a drawing rather than a memory. The engineering effort does not scale down with the motor rating.

Standardising the panels across all twelve stations is what made the difference. One design, one terminal arrangement, one set of tags and one alarm philosophy, so a technician who has worked on any of them has effectively worked on all of them, and a spare held for one station fits the others.