Safety, reliability, efficiency, and a very high and certified skill level. These are the factors that set apart our remote control centre in Forli. It is a multi-specialized centre, unique in Italy and at the forefront at the European level.
The advanced technology at this centre of technological excellence is applied at differing levels: prevention, safety, research and innovation.
The centre features multi-monitor pc stations for operators working on shifts and an enormous video control wall with 2,400 inch screens for a total 60 metres of screened surface. A 3D system that displays all the most important plants and systems.
Operating 24/7 all year round, the centre guarantees the non-stop efficient and effective supply of the following services in the territory Hera Group covers (Emilia-Romagna, Triveneto, and Marche) through a careful distribution of staff presence:
- managing all emergency calls in the territory (over 515,000 every year) with exceptional performance by providing 260 incoming lines and generating 168,000 geo-referenced work orders every year and monitoring their progress.
- continuous monitoring of around 8,900 plants and systems and 719,000 data points throughout the territory by acquiring 28 million values every day and checking an approx. 68,000 km water, gas and district heating network in real-time
 in the following ways:
- In the ordinary period, through the continuous research, collection and evaluation of events, as well as the constant updating of procedures/instructions;
- In the presence of an event, through surveys of the activities conducted at the centre to collect all useful information in diagnosing the event in progress, developing/updating the scenario, and taking appropriate action;
- In a critical/emergency period, through the implementation of the procedures/instructions for a rapid and coordinated intervention of emergency response teams present in the various territories.
In addition to technical answers and emergency assistance for customers, the Technical Call Centre is the reference point for contacts and information for Institutions/Entities with a dedicated free phone number, including urgent calls for Environmental Services within the Group.
The Technical Call Centre supports operating structures with an internal dedicated number for all the various business units and the Fleets assistance service after working hours.
The E-mobility Response Service is also provided for the electric charging of HeraCom customer vehicles.
This set of activities "amplifies" the content of the information. Thanks also to its function as a “concentratorâ€, it represents a Collaborative Operations Centre that combines the functions of Technical Call Centre and the Remote Control Centre, creating a network between operative human resources, networks, and systems, thus bringing synergy to the centralisation of information and data in support of the various Business Units and Group Companies.
This highly-advanced system equipped with safety precautions with 5 redundancy levels permits the handling of every emergency that arises in the territory in order to guarantee operative structures continuous monitoring and complete coverage even in case of black-out or wide-scale hack attacks. In addition, all plant and system management parameters are always available to Hera technicians, even when they are on the move, thanks to a Cloud service that can be used with a customized dedicated App.
The numbers
It is the largest centre in Italy, in terms of the number of services and remote control points, and among the largest in Europe.
Development and Innovation
The Remote Control Centre is a point of reference for the general public and our own internal community. Every day, this "information concentrator" processes 28 million data values (digital, analogue, logic. etc. signals) that are indispensable to the management of plants and systems and preventing problems from arising by means of the appropriate alerts using the most innovative technologies to ensure higher and higher quality standards with lower and lower management costs. Innovations at the Centre include the following:
The development of tools to support the Heratrading company in the field of MSD (dispatching service market) management for "energy balancing" integrated with the Terna site and the creation of SW for "energy optimisation" at plants and systems.
Cathodic Protection Tool: the system has a SW tool integrated in the SCADA system that makes it possible to monitor graphically and/or in tabular form any information from the field, such as the DDP, current, modem and processor voltages, and TFL and even compare the corresponding values from several devices at the same time. Through a dedicated Authority section, the tool also makes it possible to deliver all the pdf documentation necessary for reporting to the competent authorities at the end of the year.
A water leakage monitoring tool that collects fluid-dynamic information from the various water districts in integration with the SCADA system using both real-time and historicized graphs. All leaks are promptly highlighted with Alert.
Tool odourising optimization systems. The tool consists of a SCADA dashboard that allows the Odourising Rate level of the gas injected into the network from every single Oars Cabin to be checked daily and tank emptying forecasts for easier organisation of quantities and recharge times. Alerts and evidence of odourising rate deviations (between optimal and real scenarios) are generated through both "traditional" algorithms and Machine Learning tools integrated in the TLC:
- A speech analytics tool: applying Intelligent APIs to the voice side allows us to monitor response quality levels by searching for the keywords and “sentiments" of the conversations while also searching for specific situations (complaints, inspection visits, special situations...);
The laboratory
We have an advanced Remote Control Laboratory, where our technical experts in automation and measurement instruments work.
This is where the new functionalities of the SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) Remote Control system are developed and where the new field RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) devices are tested.
The new Hera Group RTU standards are then defined according to laboratory tests, system integration checks, and experimental installations in the field.
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