SCADA network designed to deflect cyber attacks, meet future utility and municipal needs, and connect people, business and industry.
On Tuesday, September 27, CLW General Manager John Lester joined our own Dee Brown at the 2016 Smart Industry Conference in Chicago. The two presented Clarksville Light & Water’s game-changing, cyber-secure New SCADA project, which illustrates how Brown Engineers is helping utilities better manage their infrastructure while adding an embedded layer of cyber-security.
Clarksville Light & Water (CLW) is a small-town utility that’s reaping big benefits as an early adopter of recent SCADA software and hardware innovations. CLW provides electric, water and wastewater services to a community of about 10,000 in northwest Arkansas, one of the fastest growing areas in the nation. This upgrade enhances Clarksville’s ability to attract (and support) the many businesses and industries drawn to this vibrant, progressive region each year.
Toward that goal, CLW installed 16.7 miles of 288 strand fiber cable citywide, using redundant loops for maximum reliability, primarily for its internal SCADA systems (water, wastewater and electric). A new Network Operations Center (NOC) now houses servers in a weather resistant vault for secured data storage and back up.
With vision and foresight, CLW management and the Utility Commission opted to overbuild the network. The new fiber network was “super-sized” with plenty of extra capacity to support other goals including additional smart grid applications, future broadband expansion, and future smart communications and data management for local government, transportation, library, healthcare and education.
The SCADA upgrade, designed and installed by Brown Engineers, was completed in mid-2016 using Ignition software by Inductive Automation in conjunction with Bedrock Automation’s cyber-secure automation platform.
