Visualization and control of the cooling process at Wilhelminapolder in the Netherlands

Wilhelminapolder is one of the largest agricultural companies in the Netherlands. Situated north of the city of Goes, the company farms 1,300 hectares of arable land, 36 hectares of woodland, and 56 acres of pasture. Also, the company is engaged in the breeding of mussels on 162 hectares of the Oosterschelde National Park in the province of Zeeland.

Control system

In 2004, three independent cooling units were installed at Wilhelminapolder. The units are used to cool potatoes stored in a warehouse.

To control the cooling units, a Hitachi EH-150 PLC was used. The Reliance SCADA/HMI system was installed on the warehouse control PC to control and visualize the process of cooling and to monitor the consumption of electric energy within the cooling rooms. Thus, the control PC allows the operators to monitor and control the three cooling units from one place.

In addition, a Web client was used to display the visualization application on remote computers, so the cooling process and the electric energy consumption can be easily monitored or controlled, for example, from home via a notebook.

Examples of visualization windows

Cooling room overview window

Visualization of a cooling room