With the rise in renewables has come a paradigm shift in the layout of power generation operations. Generators need more variability and versatility, not only to serve increasing demand, but also to hedge against increasingly severe weather and other unpredictable global events. As a result, more and more companies are expanding their portfolios, acquiring assets of many different types, often across wide geographic areas.
This expansion definitely provides a more robust infrastructure, capable of weathering issues of all sorts, but it also comes as a global experienced worker shortage stretches existing teams to their limits. So, as Kevin Rossi and Chris Blasi explained in their presentation at Emerson’s Ovation Users Group, more and more organizations are pursuing the potential of remote integrated operations centers to ease the strain.
“Typically, you may have an M&D center, fleet management, fleet engineering, all spread all over, especially if you’re a large utility. You have plants all over and you have shared people who go from site to site, and they get there, but it may take a couple days because they have other things on their priority list. We can centralize that into one common control center”
“We need to find ways to increase operators’ efficiency and effectiveness. You have less operators controlling more sites.”
Everyone works together
Many organizations already have remote operations, some using remote desktop protocol, and others using more advanced solutions. Maintaining some level of visibility from a remote site not only eases the strain on overburdened crews, but also provides companies a way to ensure more granular control and increased uptime. However, the vision of a remote integrated operations center goes beyond basic remote operation.
The “integrated” element is key. Bringing everyone together in one location increases collaboration, which in turn increases innovation and results in higher reliability and availability across all operational and maintenance areas.
“In a corporate office they build out a ROCC, and that office is shared with the M&D center, and fleet engineering, and with all the people who go from site to site. So now, if there’s an issue, that operator who might just be one floor down or one floor up and can pick up the phone to call and say, ‘Hey, come down here and look at this.’ It’s a whole lot easier to share those resources.”
A vision of what could be
Imagine a single floor of a building, with one room containing consoles and operators, each responsible for several plants. But that group is no longer operating in isolation. In the integrated center, they’re adjacent to the maintenance and diagnostics team—perhaps only separated by a cubicle wall. The groups can actually walk across the room to consult on issues, building relationships and increasing cohesion between both areas.
But it doesn’t end there. Next door could be the training center, where operators could get currency training once a month without having to travel. Management is across the hall, where they can not only just walk out the door to get the latest information for their morning calls but can also virtually visit every plant every day.
With subject matter experts all over the building, problems at any site can be solved quickly and easily. The plants themselves can be managed by a small crew of maintenance personnel, with only the occasional need for visits, dramatically reducing travel, and ensuring that the best, most experienced personnel can contribute to the optimal operation of every site in the organization’s network.
The technology is already here
Just a few short years ago, the risks of a remote integrated operations center would have been too high. Today, however, the technology and security exist to make it possible. Chris and Kevin shared numerous examples of companies doing just that.
One of the key benefits that appeared across the examples was consistency. With a fleet level Ovation model for a ROCC, every operator is using the same interface no matter where they are working. Even if a site has different controls locally, as often happens with renewables, those controls can be brought into Ovation for a common interface to reduce the learning curve and help operators make better, more consistent decisions across all their operations.
Insight into ROCCs was just one of a multitude of exciting topics from this year’s Ovation Users’ Group. If you weren’t able to be there, dive back into the Emerson Automation Experts blog for lots of coverage of the event!
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