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ENTERPRISE WIDE MONITORING

OF CP ASSETS
D.Celine1
1
Omniflex Pty Ltd, Sydney

SUMMARY: As the “Industrial Internet of Things” technologies for reliable 24/7 monitoring
become more accepted with mainstream users, the general demand for real-time monitoring
of assets is increasing exponentially. The increasing desire to monitor the corrosion in key
assets is no exception. This desire is not limited to just monitoring of assets protected by
impressed current CP systems but also extends to the monitoring of galvanic anode systems
and hybrid anode systems. This paper explores the benefits of having a unified strategy for
the monitoring of asset corrosion in large enterprises, the requirements of such a strategy to
realise the benefits and the practical problems associated with monitoring of corrosion in
assets across disparate legacy systems.

Keywords: Enterprise Monitoring, Corrosion Monitoring, Remote Monitoring, Impressed

Current, Galvanic Monitoring

1. INTRODUCTION
Cathodic Protection systems have been around for many years, and the basic principles employed for
protecting structures from corrosion have not changed. Newer technologies such as improvements in material
science, hybrid anodes and more space and power efficient switch mode power supply technology may have
started to provide solutions to some of the more challenging applications, but the basic techniques of
determining and reducing the rate of corrosion of structures have not changed in decades.
So why remote monitoring systems for Cathodic Protection? How can the corrosion protection industry benefit
from these new remote communications technologies?
Impressed Current Cathodic Protection systems generally have a life expectancy between 15 and 25+ years,
with galvanic systems even longer and with a large fleet of such systems already installed, this places some
practical limitations on the ability to bring these systems into a single corrosion protection monitoring regime.
In addition, the management of many disparate monitoring systems of various vintages across an enterprise
has led to many of these legacy systems falling into disuse.
The promise of the “Internet of Things”1 is the application of open systems technology to allow systems from
different manufacturers to communicate together to provide a single cohesive enterprise-wide remote
monitoring and control infrastructure for the management of these CP (and other) assets.
This paper explores the benefits of having a unified strategy for the monitoring of asset corrosion in large
enterprises, the requirements of such a strategy in order to realise the benefits and the practical problems
associated with monitoring of corrosion in assets across disparate legacy systems.

2. REQUIREMENTS FOR CP MONITORING

2.1 Identifying the need

After the application of all the available proactive measures, such as choice of materials and use of coatings, for
the prevention of corrosion in assets like steel pipelines, tanks, wharves, bridges and other structures exposed
to moisture, it is often left to cathodic protection to provide the final layer of protection from corrosion.
Often this need is identified during the design and planning phases of the asset, but often this need only arises
after many years, when initial conditions change, and corrosion has already set in. Once detected in these
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cases, remediation work is undertaken to repair the corroded parts of the asset, and cathodic protection is
applied to prevent further corrosion from occurring.
By the design and installation of cathodic protection systems, long-term, cost effective prevention of corrosion
can be achieved.

2.2 Remembering the need

But after the installation is complete, it takes a coordinated system of long term management practices to
ensure that effective cathodic protection is maintained through the remaining decades of the life of the asset.
There are many reported cases where even the existence of the cathodic protection system has been forgotten,
and even more cases where the cathodic protection system has fallen into disrepair because of short term
budget pressures or lack of assigned responsibility within the organisation 2.
And often maintenance of these cathodic protection systems is not considered as an integral part of business
planning. But corrosion is slow, silent and irreversible. It has no (short term) impact on production but is too
technical for conventional asset management departments to handle.

2.3 Factors affecting the long-term performance of Cathodic Protection Systems

Many factors can affect the efficacy of a cathodic protection system over the long term such as:
• Errors in the CP design,
• Deterioration of anodes,
• Introduction of stray currents,
• Changes in the substrate resistivity reducing the amount of current reaching parts of the structure,
• The rectifiers are simply not monitored and maintained.

2.4 Assessing Rates of Corrosion

The only reason for the installation of a cathodic protection system is to prevent or at least retard the rate of
corrosion in an asset. So how do you determine that this goal is being achieved? Due to environmental and
other changes over time, such as the factors listed above, it is not sufficient to assume that the mere presence
of the cathodic protection system will prevent corrosion. This determination is complex and requires the regular
employment of specialist consultants or fully trained in house person.

2.5 Regulations and Testing

In many countries including Australia 3 and the United Kingdom there are regulations that cover the design,
installation, registration, operation and testing and of cathodic protection systems. This includes the regular
testing of these systems including:
• System operation checks
• Cathodic protection potential surveys
• Equipment maintenance checks
• Structure Inspections

2.6 Record keeping requirements

In some states test records must be kept for ten years if the system is an impressed current system or a
sacrificial system with a total anode mass of more than 25kg4.

3. HISTORY OF REMOTE MONITORING OF CP ASSETS

The benefits of remotely monitoring cathodic protection systems have long been recognised, but these systems
have generally got a bad name5 for the following reasons:

3.1 Available Technology

Computers and communications systems have been evolving rapidly since the 1970’s when the internet was
invented. This made this technology expensive to deploy, with the evolving standards resulting in rapid
obsolescence.

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3.2 Inadequate Design

Often, these remote monitoring systems were attempted by companies versed in the art of cathodic protection
but not in remote monitoring, resulting in these systems being unreliable or poorly designed.

3.3 Closed Systems

Due to the lack of stable standards, most of these systems were bespoke, and only suitable for use with one
specific manufacturer’s cathodic protection system – often their own. This resulted in larger enterprises being
saddled with many different systems to learn to use and maintain.

3.4 Irregular Use

With the reporting requirements only necessitating these systems being deployed a few times a year, the lack of
use made it even more difficult keep these bespoke systems operational, and users trained.

3.5 Dedicated Hardware and Software

Most of these systems required dedicated hardware and software based upon computer hardware that went
obsolete every few years, requiring high maintenance costs.

4. BENEFITS
But the benefits of remote monitoring of cathodic protection systems in meeting the needs of the modern
enterprise are even more compelling than ever:

4.1 Demonstrable Compliance

Increased transparency and corporate governance standards are mandating that enterprises are not only
compliant to the standards and regulations, but that they can demonstrate this compliance. An enterprise wide
remote monitoring platform provides a single repository for all historical data and test results.

4.2 Assurance
Installing a cathodic protection system to the consultant’s design is no longer sufficient proof of corrosion being
controlled. Consultants are now being required to provide assurance that the corrosion has been halted over the
long term. By giving controlled access to consultants to perform testing and analyse test data, a significant
saving in consultant’s time and therefore cost can be achieved.

4.3 Performance
Without remote monitoring, it is impossible to know how well or even if the cathodic protection system is
protecting the asset. By automatically remotely monitoring system performance, reporting by exception can be
implemented, notifying the correct personnel of abnormal events in the system such as power failures, damaged
anodes or other equipment failure.

4.4 Cost Saving

Being able to monitor and control a CP system remotely has been shown to halve the number of site visits
required to meet the requirements of the standards, and the site visits that are required can be reduced in
duration by performing preliminary testing before even visiting site. This has been shown to significantly reduce
the operating costs of the system. These savings can often pay for the system itself in only a few years 8.
Modern distributed type CP systems can significantly reduce power bills and lower installation costs by reducing
the amount of copper cabling required in the installation

4.5 Environmental Responsibility

Old technology TR units and badly adjusted systems can waste significant power. With enterprises promoting
corporate responsibility regarding greenhouse gas emissions, this energy wastage, which can be significant in
larger systems should not be ignored.

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5. CHALLENGES

5.1 Life Expectancy

Cathodic protection installations are often designed to extend the life expectancy of an asset by 25 to 50 years.
The cathodic protection system should be designed with this life expectancy as well.
Unfortunately, computer hardware and operating systems such as Microsoft Windows have a far shorter life
expectancy of only 3 years on average. This mandates the use of web based remote monitoring systems, as
the open standards used on the web have been stable since the 1990’s and provide the most stable platform for
the maintenance of data for decades to come. Any modern computer with internet access can still access Tim
Berners-Lee’s first test web page invented in 19896.

The world’s first web page published by Tim Berners-

Lee in 1989 on a NeXT computer.
This image was taken in 2018 from a 12-inch Apple
MacBook manufactured in 2017.
This shows that the technology of the internet can
withstand the changing fads and advances of
technology

5.2 Management Tools

Cathodic Protection systems are accessed on average every six months to meet compliance requirements. If
dedicated hardware and software is purchased for this remote monitoring, these systems can sit idle for months
at a time and keeping such systems operational between accesses can be challenging.
Fortunately, web based systems avoid this problem by centrally hosting data storage and processing services.

5.3 Complexity and Reliability

Adding remote monitoring capability to a cathodic protection system can add additional complexity, and if the
remote monitoring system is not reliable, can be seen as more trouble than it is worth 5.
A conservative strategy still exists that promotes the installation of the most basic and least technologically
advanced CP systems in the hope that these systems will last the longest with the least amount of trouble.
Unfortunately, these systems end up costing the asset owner significantly more to operate over the life of the
asset due to the increased maintenance and reporting costs, and in larger systems, energy costs. The absence
of the remote monitoring also denies the asset owner the ability to be notified when the cathodic protection
deteriorates for any reason.

5.4 Security
Many sceptics of the web state the lack of security as a key reason why the web should be used in real life
applications. But security and traceability have never been better on the web than they are today. Almost
everyone today trusts the web for doing internet banking, and the security systems required to achieve this are
the same security measures available for securing CP systems on the web.

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State-of-the-art security used in banking

transactions today on the internet

Professional hosting services ensuring the

integrity of customer data.

5.5 Communications
Until the invention of the ubiquitous mobile phone networks, all remote monitoring of CP assets had to be done
with either custom radio systems or with land-line dial-up connections. This was a real problematic area, but
fortunately the advent of the GSM networks and the almost universal overage of these systems, the
communications infrastructure necessary to operate remote monitoring systems is no longer a major issue. And
with the advent of the latest developments in “IoT” (Internet of Things” technology, even more low-cost
monitoring options such as “NB-IOT” are already accessible from mobile phone Telco’s.

Power
Impressed current cathodic protection systems require power to operate, and so powering the remote
monitoring for these cp systems does not present an issue.
But galvanic systems do not generally have access to a power source, and so any remote monitoring system
must be self-powered through batteries, or solar power or other means. This is currently a focus area of
research and development, with major strides having been made to reduce the power required to monitor and
communicate the status of CP systems in the absence of power.

5.6 Integrating Legacy Systems

While remote monitoring is appealing to better manage fleets of cathodic protection systems across an
enterprise, it is impractical to consider replacing all legacy cathodic protection systems just for the purposes of
adding remote monitoring. The remote monitoring system therefore needs to accommodate the integration of
various manufacturers’ systems and ages of systems.
While simple voltage and current monitoring of impressed current systems is a good starting point for this
remote monitoring, the real cost savings only start to kick in when site visits can be reduced through remote
testing.

6. NEW TECHNOLOGIES

6.1 The “Internet of Things”

There has been a significant amount of press in recent months as technology companies try to move a group of
new technologies popularly known as the “Industrial Internet of Things” into main stream business.
The “Internet of Things” encompasses the technologies that surround providing the means to connect every
sensor in the world to the internet reliably and securely.
But while this publicity makes this appear very new, much of the technology being applied to “IoT” has been
around for decades. It is this silent truth that is making the growth of connected devices so rapid.
What has improved is the promise that these technologies can be stitched together into a more seamless
“Internet of Things” in a similar way in which humans can so easily communicate via the “internet of humans”
today: The same way that any browser, on any computer can view web pages in a similar way, or in which
emails can be sent and received on many different devices from mobile phones to main frame computers. This
leads to far more open systems for remote monitoring, preventing the enterprise from being locked into a single
service provider for all their cathodic protection systems.

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6.2 The Wireless World

The improvements in wireless technologies have also caused a step change in the ability to communicate down
to the sensor level. This is still a developing field, with new wireless technologies emerging every year. This is
the frontier of current development mainly in the consumer space, but the effects of this technology
development are already spilling into the industrial space with new multi-sourced technologies such as
Bluetooth 5, and Open Thread wireless networks being promoted by consortiums of companies including the
largest technology companies such as Microsoft and Google.

6.3 The Powerless World

More than the absence of open communications standards though, the absence of power has been a larger
stumbling block in the take-up of remote monitoring in a more ubiquitous manner. Without power, no sensor will
be able to communicate for more than a few centimetres. Conventional Impressed Current CP Systems have
power available and therefore these systems have been the first target of remote monitoring, but there is
growing demand for remote monitoring of galvanic systems where power is not always available and then
alternative sources of power are required, such as battery or solar operation.

7. A CASE STUDY
The preceding overview given in this paper might give the impression that enterprise-wide remote monitoring is
a futuristic concept. But this is not the case. Large enterprises are already taking advantage of the application of
this technology to slash the operating costs of the fleet of cathodic protection systems.
A typical case study presented here is the Port of Melbourne Corporation.
Port of Melbourne map of facilities

7.1 The challenge

The Port of Melbourne is Australasia’s largest maritime hub for containerised, automotive and general cargo
and owns and manages about 500 hectares of port land spread over an area of approximately 25 square km.
Included in these assets is of course a large number of wharves and shipping berths constructed from steel,
concrete and timber, with many cathodic protection systems installed over many years from multiple vendors
and managing and monitoring these multiple systems was a challenge.

7.2 The Solution

The Port of Melbourne took the decision to integrate these systems into an enterprise wide remote monitoring
and control system and are most of the way through a program to integrate all their significant cathodic
protection systems around the port into a single enterprise wide remote monitoring and control platform.
This has resulted in a single system managing the following assets:
• Over 17 CP Systems including 6 legacy systems from 3 different manufacturers are being remotely
monitored and controlled through a single web based portal.
• These systems are spread over 12 different sites across the port.
• The power requirement for this fleet of systems exceeds 280kW, and energy monitoring on most sites
provide a consolidated analysis of power consumption.
• Over 1000 CP zones – both concrete and water anodes are being individually monitored and controlled.
• Over 2000 reference electrodes are regularly monitored automatically to provide the port with
performance data from all their systems over varying tide, weather and seasonal conditions.
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• Email alarms are generated on any abnormal events that are sent to different contractors responsible
for the maintenance of the different systems.
• Remote access is given to consultants on some systems to allow monitoring and reporting with
minimum of site visits required.
Overview screen of one wharf at the Port of
Melbourne showing zone currents, voltages and
current alarm state.

Charting of currents from a single wharf over time.

Graphs can be downloaded as pictures or in csv
format for inclusion in custom reports.

8. CONCLUSIONS
The deployment of enterprise monitoring and control of cathodic protection systems can significantly reduce the
costs and increase the assurance of the performance of these systems over a large geographic area.
While the technology is still evolving, there is a significant base of stable technologies available now to make
these systems viable and cost effective.

9. REFERENCES

1. The Internet of Things – Promise for the Future? An Introduction - Louis COETZEE, Johan EKSTEEN -
IST-Africa 2011 Conference Proceedings
2. The case for cathodic protection Ted Huck, Matcor Inc. published Powermag.com 15/02/2008
3. AS 2832:2015
4. https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/injury-prevention-safety/electricity/cathodic-protection-systems
5. Review of Cathodic Protection Systems for Concrete Structures in Australia - Lessons Learnt and
Future Directions – A. Cheaitani C&P Conference 2014
6. http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
7. Omniflex White Paper WP– Improving the life-cycle costs and efficiency of ICCP Systems (2008)

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10. AUTHOR DETAILS

David Celine is managing director of Omniflex Pty Ltd, a position he has
held for over 20 years. David graduated as an electronics engineer and
has spent his entire working career in the development of industrial
measurement and control instrumentation products, with specialisation in
recent years in remote monitoring and control. Omniflex has been
developing ‘smart’ T/R technology in Australia for the corrosion markets
since 2008 and are considered a leading innovator world-wide in the
development and adoption of robust solutions to the problems of remote
control of cathodic protection systems.

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