Efficient Provision of KPI's with High Information Content as a Complement to Conventional Data Management Systems (DCS, PI)
(Room A)
28 Jun 17
2:00 PM
-
3:30 PM
Tracks:
Track G - Modern Plant Management
Thanks to the developments in the area of DCS and data historian capabilities operators and supporting engineers enjoy a variety of convenient ways to access operational data of their power plant unit, their wind turbine or their bio-plant. Many measurements are available at a central data base and archived for later use. However, the challenges for operators remain: The operation of plants in most parts of the world is in general more flexible, often the operating hours are limited. It is difficult to assess the condition of the unit under constantly changing external factors (weather, fuel quality, load, market demands’ etc.). At the same time, the demands of official agencies, management and customers increase: Additional reports are required and not spotting defects is not accepted any longer. Many companies establish internal experts who are meant to support the operator, via timely evaluations and practical recommendations. These experts often have to use the tools already available and typical issues are fragmented data archives, too strong data compression (losses of important information) and lacking significance of the values and results. Therefore, the conversion of data to valuable information is crucial. With advanced data management as well as handy calculation tools users can rely on state of the art modules such as neural networks, high precision water steam tables, fast fluid property algorithms, early warnings by means of statistical process control, self organizing maps and fuzzy logic modules. Which approaches and tools support the current situation depends on the current task – but the presentation will share experiences from recent projects in terms of benefits for the customer, tricky obstacles on the way and long term usage / effect.