pwr_february-2025 - 16

POWER INTERVIEW
Emerson Exec Discusses
Grid Enhancements
There are many ways to enhance power grid and power plant reliability, including the
implementation of advanced control strategies, proactive maintenance programs,
and modern technologies for early detection of potential issues. Learn how utilities
can leverage new software, automation, and predictive technologies to improve
operational performance while managing aging infrastructure.
Darrell Proctor
A
mong those talking with POWER
about reliability enhancements
for the power grid was James
Nyenhuis, plant performance consultant
for Emerson. Nyenhuis provided
POWER with insight about the work being
done to support a reliable supply of
electricity, from the power plant to the
edge of the grid.
POWER: What are some enhancements
that can be made to an electricity
transmission and distribution system
and/or a power plant (thermal or renewable)
to improve its reliability?
Nyenhuis:
Reliability has always
been a key focus for the power generation
industry, but what we see changing
significantly in today's environment
is a continued evolution of technologies,
which provide efficient means to
process more information closer to its
source and provide earlier detection of
evolving reliability risks [Figure 1]. One
of the first enhancements that comes
to mind, which can improve reliability
of the power generating facility, is to
ensure that operations teams are supported
by a well-designed alarm and
alert management process.
Many plants we engage with today are
still burdened by underperforming alarm
management systems that overload operations
staffs and induce reliability risk
by making it harder for operations teams
to identify evolving issues. Significant impacts
to reliability can be made with the
right investment in optimizing the performance
of the alarm system and providing
clear identification to off-design process
conditions to plant personnel.
Additionally, when off-design issues
have occurred, we have seen advanced
control strategies provide better coordinated
responses due to their predictive
control capabilities. These predictive
capabilities allow the control actions to
better steer through transient dynamic
conditions and maintain stability, providing
the plant an increased chance to stay
online after these types of events.
Lastly, we are seeing technology enhancements
at the " edge " that allow a
better convergence of information from
asset health, analytics, control, and performance
to provide earlier detection of
evolving issues from critical plant assets
before they demand a real-time response
from the automation system.
POWER: What are some of the maintenance
programs that can be implemented
to make a power plant and/or a
power grid more reliable? How can this
maintenance be automated?
1. Comprehensive asset performance
management focuses on critical assets that
require immediate attention to improve performance
through increased production and
decreased maintenance costs. Courtesy:
Emerson
16
Nyenhuis: Having a proactive maintenance
strategy is the secret against
declining operational performance and
managing risks to reliability. More and
more, power customers are expecting
intelligence to be built by default into
www.powermag.com
the solutions they acquire. Ideally, we
don't want a plant operator to have to
notice that an alarm is intermittently
coming in and going out to start a chain
of events that leads to the identification
of an under-performing cooling loop
control, as an example. We want that
control loop to be monitoring itself and
raising its hand, telling somebody when
it needs attention. That is how we need
to be leveraging technology.
This same concept can be applied
to the management of instrumentation,
critical rotating equipment, control
valves, etc. New technologies are allowing
us to achieve these goals. Advancements
in software [Figure 2] allow us to
automatically communicate with assets
and provide automated reporting and
confirmation of expected operation. If
the need arises, there's the ability to proactively
notify the appropriate personnel
via text or email of a potential problem
that needs attention.
POWER: How important is redundancy
as part of power plant/power grid
operations?
Nyenhuis: The criticality of redundancy
varies within different applications
across the power generation playing
field. Obviously, we will always ensure
that safety is the top priority and deploy
the right level of redundancy to maintain
safe plant operations within industry
best practices. Beyond safety considerations,
there can be economic tradeoffs
between the investment costs in additional
levels of redundancy and the lost
economic opportunity if the plant isn't
available to produce power.
Generally, we are seeing a trend towards
leveraging software applications
to provide a more sophisticated risk
analysis around the potential impacts
of not having redundancy as it pertains
to achieving the financial or operational
POWER | February 2025
http://www.powermag.com
pwr_february-2025

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