Modernizing Power Plant Remote Monitoring with Seeq
Power plant performance monitoring employs advanced digital technology to gather and analyze performance data of power plant equipment. Using real-time data insights and 24/7 oversight, power plant operators can track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as temperature, vibration, and pressure to prevent critical failures, schedule predictive maintenance, and improve overall plant efficiency.
Seeq makes power generation asset management easy with automated analytics and power plant remote support. By incorporating Seeq’s cutting-edge utility monitoring and diagnostics into your operation, you benefit from improved power plant boiler efficiency, reduced downtime, enhanced asset performance management, and remote access to specialized expertise.
Key Benefits of Centralized Monitoring & Diagnostics (M&D) Environments
Due to the complex, high-risk nature of power plant operations, consistent and reliable monitoring is crucial. The benefits of power plant centralized monitoring & diagnostics (M&D) include:
- Reduced Downtime: By monitoring and diagnosing issues from a centralized point of visibility, you can proactively identify and address issues, before resulting in equipment failure and reducing the potential for downtime.
- Improved Efficiency: M&D systems allow you to assess overall operations to address performance bottlenecks and other areas for improvement.
- Proactive Maintenance: Historical data lets you determine the best time for regular maintenance, reducing the potential for breakdowns and critical failures.
- Cost Savings: AI-enhanced M&D supports lean staffing by reducing the need for on-site support and unnecessary hardware upgrades.
- Remote Access to Specialized Expertise: Centralized monitoring facilitates communication between remote management, on-site personnel, and specialists, for a rapid collaborative response that can address issues as they arise.
- Better Asset Management: Consistent oversight lets you monitor assets, arrange regular maintenance, and promptly identify repair needs, keeping your power plant assets in good operating condition and extending your system’s service life.
Step-by-Step: Monitoring Critical Power Plant Assets
Power plant remote monitoring systems gather, transmit, and analyze operational data in one unified platform. By combining historical data, real-time condition monitoring, operator logs, asset hierarchies, and IoT in power plant operations, you can keep track of your critical asset performance.
Here’s how it works:
Detect
Engineers and subject matter experts used to analyze data manually to identify issues in power plant assets. With the power of AI pattern recognition, machine learning, and advanced analytics, they can more easily detect anomalies.
For example, Seeq can monitor gas or steam turbines, tracking vibration, temperature, dissolved gas, or even the amount of lubricant in the system. Our advanced digital tools and power plant data analytics help you detect anomalies in KPIs for multiple turbines across power plants.
Diagnose
Using real-time operational data, users can diagnose equipment health, identify signs of wear, or detect potential damage before it leads to a major failure. Condition indicators may include:
- Vibration levels and frequencies
- Thermal imaging and heat distribution
- Oil levels, consistency, and contamination
- Fluid, gas, or air pressure levels
- Ultrasonic and electrical readings
AI power plant software analyzes these performance indicators to identify issues and trace them back to the source, such as a loose bearing, failed seal, or damaged electrical component.
Collaborate
Once the M&D system identifies an issue, prompt communication and collaboration is crucial. Seeq Vantage provides a centralized mechanism for data sharing, recommendations, and teamwork between specialists and onsite teams. Based on context and knowledge gathered through data collection, power plant performance data analysis, and machine learning, M&D teams can weigh risks and benefits to create the most effective maintenance or repair plan for the situation.
Act
Using prescriptive analytics and expert recommendations, engineers can integrate solutions with computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) and work management systems. Power plant system integration creates reliable end-to-end condition-based maintenance tailored to your operational needs.
Learn
Throughout the entire process, Seeq captures feedback from the field and automates feedback loops to update models, promote continuous improvement, and enhance future decision-making. Our platform has a native capability to document prevented failures and other savings through AI and impact reports, so you can easily capture and evaluate your ROI.
Leveraging Advanced Analytics for Plant Performance
Seeq’s advanced analytics solutions use AI-enabled remote asset monitoring operations to capture SME knowledge through monitoring, investigating, and troubleshooting. Our centralized platform makes it accessible at a fleetwide level for use in decision-making and future diagnostics.Shared expert information also keeps your operation running smoothly in the face of employee turnover and retirement, particularly in situations with siloed teams.
People Also Ask
Below we address some of the most common questions related to modernizing power plant remote monitoring.
What is a power plant?
A power plant, also called a power station, is a facility that converts an energy source into usable electricity. Energy sources may include fossil fuels, wind turbines, solar panels, or nuclear reactors.
How does a power plant work?
Energy is collected from sources and converted via generators into electricity. Generally, the energy produced by burning fossil fuels or other sources is harnessed by turbines as mechanical energy. This mechanical energy drives a generator, which uses electromagnetic induction to convert the energy into electricity.
What is remote monitoring?
Remote monitoring is the use of technology to watch and manage power plant systems from a remote location. It is an effective tool for managing power plant and other energy operations without the need for a person’s physical presence.
How is remote monitoring done?
Remote power plant monitoring uses sensors to continuously collect data, which is transmitted via a wireless connection to advanced analytic software. The software collects data, analyzes it, and transmits it to operators for anomaly detection and performance optimization.
How Seeq Enhances Plant Performance
As an industry leader in industrial AI and analytics, Seeq has helped power plants nationwide avoid equipment failures, reduce operating costs, and streamline highly complex plant operations.
See some of our recent use cases below.
- Real-world application at OPG’s M&D Center: Using Seeq’s AI-powered analytics to monitor thousands of equipment systems, Ontario Power Generation’s M&D Center has prevented over 100 equipment failures and saved millions in operating costs.
- Real-world application – TVA Thermal Performance: Tennessee Valley Authority’s M&D team enables engineering leadership visibility and promotes improved decision-making by distilling fleet level insights from highly complex plant modeling outputs.
- Real-word application – Predicting Wind Turbine Failure at Deriva Energy: At Deriva Energy (formerly Duke Energy), M&D monitoring detects signs of impending wind turbine failure and communicates them through automated alerts. Timely notification and cross-system visibility enables technicians to keep the fleet running longer and more efficiently.
Industries and Leadership Roles Benefiting from Remote Monitoring
Seeq is specifically designed to provide support to complex industrial power operations,monitor thousands of power generation assets in real time and glean actionable information for process improvements and asset protection.
Our enterprise monitoring systems synthesize highly complex and detailed operational data into valuable insights, cutting through the noise to get to the information you need to make decisions. Combine SME insights and real-time monitoring into one centralized remote platform, to keep operations, engineering, IT, QA, management, and other stakeholders on the same page.
Whether you are working toward continuous improvement through digital transformation, focusing on reliability, or using data science and analytics for power plant modernization, your operation benefits from working with Seeq.