POWER April 2017 - 24

OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE
Energy, noted that utilities that have embraced
the possibilities of digitization have
seen returns across their entire operations,
from generation and distribution, to trading,
retail, and even headquarters overhead.
Digitization can improve plant security,
network security, and system integrity, he
noted.
Andrew Johnson, supervisor of Salt River
Project's (SRP's) Performance Monitoring
Center (PMC) in Arizona, reported similar
benefits from the cooperative's embrace of
advanced predictive analytics. The project
began with one combined cycle plant in
2005, and SRP has since rolled it out across
its entire fleet, expanding the range of data
it gathers over time. The PMC is staffed by
a crew of experienced plant supervisors who
are able to give expert advice to plant workers
remotely. The results have more than
justified the substantial investment.
" In 2016, the PMC managed 318 saves, "
Johnson said.
SRP plans to expand the PMC's capabilities
through additional advanced modeling
of performance and vibrational data.
Using Data to Optimize Your Plant
One area that big data and advanced monitoring
can help with is environmental compliance,
two speakers noted. Philip Black,
product marketing director with the Wood
Group, pointed out that noncompliance has
become more costly, and that the Environmental
Protection Agency expects plant
compliance data to be much more accessible
than it has been in the past (Figure 2). That
means the old spreadsheet approach is often
no longer enough.
" You can't afford to have a bunch of different
sets of data sets for your compliance.
You can't have Operations looking at one
set of data, Environmental collecting that
data manually, and then sending it to Management, "
he said. " Operations needs that
same data and same information. "
But having a connected plant means operators
can run equipment based on actual
values instead of estimates, and it allows for
a more consistent, predictable approach that
can prevent problems before they occur, he
said. Properly configured systems will identify
data loss instead of relying on faulty instrumentation
that can throw off results. All
of this allows for more efficient operations
and better decision-making.
" You get the ability to start using your
compliance data as a dataset, as a consistent
set of information in a format that everyone
can access and use, " he said. " It's not just
the right data to the right person. It's the
right data into the right system. "
One especially powerful tool is using
these rich historical datasets for failure analysis,
so that the plant has a clear picture of
exactly what went wrong, where, and why.
" It gives us the ability to move the information
from static reports into visual and
other representations to show where the
failures occurred, " he said.
Advanced neural net modeling and rich
data can allow for real-time, closed-loop
combustion optimization, Steve Piche,
software director with GE Power Digital
Services, explained. Earlier generations of
neural net models could only predict current
or changing values in emissions data due to
changes in manipulated variables. The most
recent generation, however, can not only
predict changes, but also predict levels of
confidence in the new values based on those
variables. This allows for much more precise
tuning of combustion, he said, because
the predicted confidence values can be used
to evaluate the quality of the models.
" What this allows us to do is understand
what inputs are affecting what outputs, and
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POWER April 2017

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