POWER February 2021 - 19

CONNECTED PLANT
at the points of central dispatch. "
Witmer told POWER that AI has a
role in the design of virtual power plants,
and can be used to model dispatch from
other generation facilities. " Today, any
power plant [virtual or actual], is designed
through a process that involves a lot of
modeling, or simulations of what-if scenarios, "
he said. " That model must be as
accurate as possible, including the controls
behavior of not only the new plant in
question, but also the rest of the grid and/
or markets nearby. As more AI is used in
the actual context of this new potential
power plant, the model must also contain
a reflection of that same AI. No model is
perfect, but as more AI gets used in the
actual dispatch of power plants, more AI
will be needed in the design and creation
process for new power plants or aggregations
of power generation equipment. "
Long-Term Efficiency
The real-world applications of AI and ML
in power generation are being recognized
in a variety of ways, certainly in operations
but also as part of workforce efficiencies.
" Globally, experienced power generation
operators represent an ever-shrinking
workforce whose deep domain know-how
and expertise are critical to efficient, safe,
and reliable operations, " said Stephen
Kwan, director of Product Management
for Power Generation/Grid Management
at Beyond Limits, an industrial and enterprise-grade
AI technology company. Kwan
told POWER, " This subject matter expertise
needs to be captured, digitized, and
made accessible across the workforce
in order to ensure the long-term continuity,
efficiency, and reliability of operations
across the power
generation domain.
Novel hybrid AI/ML approaches represent
a necessary avenue for combining the
value of data and domain knowledge to
tackle global challenges facing the power
generation industry. "
Beyond Limits in December 2020 announced
it
is working with NVIDIA to
advance an initiative for bringing digital
transformation to the energy sector.
NVIDIA provides AI computing platforms;
the company's graphics processing unit
software serves several industries with
virtualization solutions.
" AI has the potential to make a major
impact on problems facing the heart of the
global energy business, but the technology
requires high levels of computing power to
operate on the level and scale required by
many of today's global producers, " said AJ
Abdallat, CEO of Beyond Limits. " With
NVIDIA technology support and expertise,
February 2021 | POWER
2. A cognitive power plant project in Africa will use artificial intelligence and technology developed
by Beyond Limits to monitor the facility's operations. The technology originated with
NASA. Courtesy: Beyond Limits
Beyond Limits is better positioned to offer
faster, more intelligent and efficient
AI-based solutions for maximizing energy
production and profitability. "
Beyond Limits in 2019 was awarded
a contract by Switzerland-based Xcell, a
global financial and minerals development
company, to build the world's first cognitive
power plant (Figure 2). The company
said the plant " is part of a large-scale
infrastructure program to drive core industrial
capacity and power economic
development in West Africa. " The $25 million
deal includes the development of Beyond
Limit's Cognitive Power Generation
Advisor, a technology which originated for
NASA missions, to monitor operations at
a natural gas-fired power plant.
Cybersecurity Concerns
As with anything in the digital realm, cybersecurity
concerns are part of the landscape
when dealing with increased digitization
and the use of data.
" Even with a smart grid, there is a
potential source of cyber concern, " said
Panigrahi. " A central system that collects
data about the energy usage habits of
millions of users can emerge as a target
for malicious cyberattacks. This could potentially
destabilize a grid while also damaging
precious consumer data. Power
companies must deploy comprehensive
cyber defense systems through a regular
cadence of perimeter tests in order to
have a high level of confidence to protect
the system. Additional technologies from
augmented reality and virtual reality can
aid and assist in these perimeter tests to
spot and identify potential threats to the
digital perimeter. "
Said Kwan: " Given AI requires a lot of
data, it's vital to incorporate subject matter
experts when creating the machine learning/AI
models so as to understand the minimum
required data set. It's also important
to follow IT best practices to ensure data is
www.powermag.com
isolated from critical infrastructure like the
control network, confirm only the leastrequired
privilege is given to the users or
applications, and implement logging and
audits per industry security measures. "
Kwan continued: " In a typical power
generation facility, the control system resides
on an isolated and dedicated network.
Meanwhile, business users are
typically on separate networks that are
more 'open' for cybersecurity threats. All
AI/ML applications require good/clean data
for optimal functionality. As such, any data
necessary for AI/ML solutions-that reside
on the control network-need to be
pushed to business networks in a safe and
reliable manner. By preventing network
traffic into the control network and only allowing
data to be pushed from the control
network, it decreases the chance of cybersecurity
incidents on the control network. "
Kwan noted other aspects of generation
related to AI and ML. " AI/ML approaches
will add significant value to the ever-growing
deployment of large-scale, geographically
distributed energy resources, " he
said. " The optimal management of tradeoffs
between meeting demands, ensuring
low-risk and reliable operations, and
maintaining the integrity of key assets will
require AI/ML systems capable of building
and supporting holistic models of specific
power planning and scheduling, generation,
and distribution processes. "
Kwan said the use of AI and ML applications
in the power generation and
utilities sector will only grow in the coming
years. " Integration and adoption of
machine learning and other artificial intelligence
solutions are already increasing
exponentially, " he said. " At this pace, the
outlook for advanced technologies points
towards AI approaches becoming the
gold standard for the future growth of
the power generation/utilities industry. " ■
-Darrell Proctor is associate
editor for POWER.
19

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POWER February 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER February 2021