POWER January 2022 - 34

CONNECTED PLANT
Digital Twins and Remote
Monitoring Address Changes in
the Energy Industry-Quickly
Power producers today need to address multiple changes to the energy industry
that are coming fast and furious. Among these changes are diversification of fleets,
new power generating profiles, and drastic changes in workforce demographics. It's
definitely a balancing exercise that requires new tools and techniques.
Martha Saker
T
he global COVID-19 pandemic has
added to the challenges faced by
electric utilities. It has also forced
power producers to think differently
about how to run their plants. Two technologies
arise to the forefront as not only
solutions to meeting these challenges,
but also have presented some new ways
of working that help companies transform
the business.
Digital Twins Optimize Operations
Matching the human factor with digital
technologies is vital to the energy transition
for several key reasons. The most important
is data. Power generators need
to deliver power as efficiently, effectively,
and affordably as possible. Quality data
is key to making that happen. The more
data we have about the state of assets,
the more we can bring to bear the full
capabilities of digital tools.
There are three questions that company
leaders need to ask themselves as
they grapple with this new reality. They
are:
■ How do we reduce costs?
■ How do we manage risk?
■ How do we avoid lost production opportunities?
Digital
twins and industrial artificial
intelligence (AI) can help manage increasingly
complex assets quickly, while
anticipating problems before they happen.
Digital twins create an accurate virtual
replica of physical objects, assets,
and systems (Figure 1) to boost productivity
and streamline operations. An
asset digital twin is an increasingly common
tool for operators of large equipment
to optimize their maintenance
schedules, predict, and avoid unplanned
downtime. Asset data is leveraged to
34
1. A digital twin is a software representation of a physical asset, system, or process, designed
to optimize operation and predict problems through real time analytics. Courtesy: GE Digital
simulate asset performance in different
usage scenarios under varying conditions,
based on the known risks and usage
information.
Digital twins provide a lot of value.
Among the benefits are:
■ Operations and maintenance (O&M)
optimization through the ability to plan
outages to fix or prevent unplanned
events. Reactive work is two to five
times more expensive than planned
work, and planned work can utilize resources
in a more productive way.
■ Mitigate operational risk by avoiding
catastrophic events and taking people
away from operational tasks that are
critical to running the plant.
■ Improve availability and reliability by
avoiding
unplanned downtime and
lost production.
Increased reliability and reduced reactive
maintenance lead to higher efficiency
and reduced costs. Companies that
have implemented digital twins in their
operations have increased reliability by
www.powermag.com
as much as 99% in less than two years,
reduced reactive maintenance by 40%,
and avoided $11 million in lost production
by preventing impending failures.
Addressing Operational Pressures
Another outcome of the energy transition
is increasing cost pressures for
traditional power generation plants,
with equipment pushed to the limits
of normal operating conditions, which
can introduce performance and maintenance
challenges. Advanced software,
analytics, and capabilities provided by
technology experts can help. Some
technology vendors can augment a
companies' in-house operations with
expert services that expand digital capabilities
and staffing. They can even
train the right people and develop the
right processes needed to capitalize
on new technologies.
The good news for power generators
is that there are multiple " blueprints "
for common equipment models that will
speed implementation of digital twin
technology in most plants. A digital twin
POWER | January 2022

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POWER January 2022

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