Blog - Post List
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Ask the Expert: Your burning questions about frequency and inertia for renewables and Inverter-Based Resources

    Meeting local and national CO 2 emission goals and responding to social pressures related to global warming are primary factors driving decarbonization efforts in the energy industry across the world. At the same time, electricity demand is growing across the board. Together, decarbonization and increasing demand are creating a challenging environment for organizations tasked with ensuring grid resiliency. Efficient…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Redefining AI: Turning Analytic Insights into Actionable Intelligence

    Analytics using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) presents a massive opportunity, but also confusion. Where to start? How to start? What models to apply where? What types of problems can analytics solve?   Advanced analytics can transition power producers from a reactive operations and maintenance approach to a predictive or prognostic strategy. This actionable intelligence—built directly into the…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Weighing Your Wind Turbine Options: Retrofit, Replace or Repair?

    I’m often asked about how much impact wind turbine control retrofits can have on overall operations, and how they stack up against replacement or repair. It’s simple: they can be a very cost-effective way to positively affect the performance and reliability of a single wind turbine, multiple turbines within a wind farm and fleets of multiple wind farms. Pros and cons at a glance As wind turbines age and become less…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: With investment flowing into hydro plants, it’s time to think about the benefits of modernizing controls

    Funding is flowing into U.S. hydropower facilities: Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that through the Hydroelectric Production Incentive, 66 hydro facilities would receive $38 million in incentive payments for electricity generated and sold. This funding, authorized by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is part of a $750 million commitment to incentivize investment and capital improvements in this source…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Should you Rethink your PID-based Control Strategy?

    PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative)-based control has been commonly used for decades. And while it still is adequate for controlling many process parameters, the time may be right to take a step back and re-evaluate PID-based control in power generation and other industries. Why now? The answer lies in an increasingly diverse energy mix that includes more renewable sources such as solar and wind, which is causing…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: The Price of Decarbonization

    At the Reuters Energy Transition North America 2023 in Houston, Texas, Emerson’s Bob Yeager joined a panel, Bearing the Load: The Price of Decarbonization. Leaders from Transmission ConEd, ENGIE NA, and Duke Energy joined Bob on the panel. The Chairman, President & CEO of Entergy Texas moderated the discussion. Here is the abstract for this panel. Is the decarbonization imperative at odds with the need for stable…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Going Boldly Into a Green Hydrogen Future

    Of all the new sustainable technologies emerging in the energy marketplace, one of the most exciting is green hydrogen. In an era of increasing focus on sustainability, green hydrogen has the potential to provide clean power for manufacturing, transportation, and more, and its only emission is water.  But while the possibilities for use are limitless, the value chain for green hydrogen manufacturing is incredibly complex…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Increasing Demands by Solar Plants for Regulatory Compliance, Efficiency and Productivity Are Met and Exceeded by PACSystems™︎ Control Solutions

    Dealing with outdated legacy systems is a challenge for nearly all industrial companies. In the fast-paced solar energy space, shifting market demands, regulatory requirements and increasing competition drive the need for modern capabilities to meet these new challenges. However, upgrading and replacing key technologies can be time consuming and cost prohibitive. This was the challenge that Nor-Cal Controls, a leading…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Beating the Drum for Improved Dynamic Performance, Resiliency and Stability

    When was the last time you thought about your drum level control strategy? If it’s been a while, here are a few reasons why you might want to elevate this on your priority list. The energy landscape has changed as power producers continue their journey toward net-zero. Renewable sources of energy are playing a more prominent role in megawatt generation and this, in turn has implications for conventional power generating…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Advanced Process Control for Combined-Cycle Power Plants

    Ranjit Rao , Jon Gillam , and Jim Nyenhuis presented Maximize your Combined Cycle Plant’s Performance with 5 Advanced Applications that Provide the Quickest ROI at the 2023 Ovation Users Group Conference. They opened by sharing some statistics about the challenges with global electrification. Advance control enables greater power plant flexibility to help address some of these challenges. Jim noted a paradox that…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Steam Turbine Electro-Hydraulic Control

    Emerson’s Mark Stratton and Tori Winter presented Steam Turbine Electro-Hydraulic Control (EHC) Systems at the 2023 Ovation Users Group Conference. They opened by sharing a description of a steam turbine EHC system. Fluid power components and electronic controls operate the primary steam valves on a steam turbine and includes utility, extraction, and auxiliary turbines. The EHC components consist of a hydraulic power…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Optimizing Pump Performance with Measurements and Analytics

    Emerson’s Melanie Novacek presented Ovation Advanced Process Control Pump Performance Algorithm at the 2023 Ovation Users Group Conference. Melanie opened by highlighting the APC Toolkit Pump Performance Algorithm in Ovation 3.8 systems and later. APC Toolkit pump performance algorithm calculates the following for centrifugal pumps based on the ASME Power Test Codes: Efficiency Head – suction, discharge, and total…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Power & Water Cybersecurity Tips & Tricks

    Thomas Kizer and Robert Conte presented Power and Water Cybersecurity Suite: Tips & Tricks for Advanced Users at the 2023 Ovation Users Group Conference. The Power and Water Cybersecurity Suite (PWCS) modules collect thousands of data points every minute and enable users to customize how data is displayed to allow for faster reactions to a security incident and prepare the data to be used for compliance properly. Receiving…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Better Grid Reliability Starts with Analytics

    As electrical grids get more complex, so too does the task of keeping them online. Grid operators have long had reliability programs, as they are essential to safe operation, but the most effective plants are updating those programs with modern technologies as they are forced to do more with less in the face of changing global market dynamics. At the 2023 Ovation Users’ Group conference , Emerson’s Brian Overton shared…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Successfully Bring Renewable Assets Into the Fold

    One of the hottest topics of conversation at the 2023 Ovation Users’ Group conference has been renewables, and much of that conversation has been around the struggle to bring a wide array of disparate renewable assets together into a unified system of control, monitoring, and analytics. Modern power generators need to bring a wide variety of assets together. Finding a simple solution to manage them all from one place…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Ovation Users’ Group Power Industry Forum Tackles Modern Challenges

    The power industry session at the 2023 Ovation Users’ Group conference in Pittsburgh took a closer look into the state of the industry, exploring both what is happening broadly in power generation, as well as the impact of the rise of renewables on the way plants and organizations operate. The first session, moderated by Jim Rarey from American Electric Power, focused on the power industry in general. Jim was joined…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Modernizing and Simplifying Water Handling for Power Generator

    A power producer shared the story of their successful project to upgrade their generation capacity and modernize their control system and improve communications and control with the wastewater treatment plant supplying water for steam generation. The upgrades included wet compression and duct burners to decrease NOx and CO2 emissions. The upgrade replaced a older DCS with an Ovation system on their steam turbine control…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Ovation Users’ Group 2023 Opens with a Look Into the Future

    After three long years, the Ovation Users’ Group is back in person in Pittsburgh in 2023. Bob Yeager opened the conference with an expansive vision for the many ways Emerson will work together with its users to meet a changing future. Change is a central theme in power generation today, so it is no surprise that it is also a central theme for #OvationUG. Bob explained that true change cannot happen without reinvention…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Addressing Changing Grids with Technology Innovations

    Rick Kephart presented Ovation Technology and Innovation for the 2020s and Beyond​ at the 2023 Ovation Users Group conference. Rick opened by discussing the Ovation hyper-converged infrastructure, which simplifies virtual systems​. The traditional server and storage silos are collapsed into a simpler, more efficient hyper-converged layer​. This infrastructure eliminates dedicated storage devices, expands server options…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Growing Complexity in Power Grids

    The Ovation Users Group Conference kicked off today in Pittsburgh, PA. Emerson’s Jaime Foose and Morgan Lewis presented, When Thermals and Renewables Collide: Meeting the Challenges of an Evolving Power Market. Morgan opened by noting how over the next decade and beyond, the shift to a more diversified energy portfolio is expected to materially accelerate. For energy companies, increased scrutiny from investors, regulators…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Optimizing Renewable Energy Asset Operations

    As our energy grids continue to add more renewable sources, the complexity of managing these grids grows greater. In this 10:43 YouTube video, Ovation Green Renewable Asset Management and SCADA Software Technology Demonstration , Emerson’s Brett Benson demonstrates how the built-for-purpose Ovation Green asset management and SCADA software provides a unified view of renewable assets from a single pane of glass, helping…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Duke Energy Addresses Attemperator Issues

    Duke Energy’s Heat Recovery Steam Generator Engineer Eugene Eagle and Emerson’s Director of Steam Conditioning Group Justin Goodwin recently published an article in the February 2022 edition of Power Engineering. The article is titled How Duke Energy Addresses Attemperator Issues,  and it describes the deployment of a new steam atomization attemperator design that allowed Duke to reliably and safely run their combined…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Improving Water Cycle Energy Reliability

    Water utilities are challenged to reliably produce and distribute safe, drinkable water to the communities they serve. It’s an energy-intensive process to accomplish this. In a North America Clean Energy article, How the Shift to Distributed Energy Resources Impacts the Water-Power-Carbon Nexus , Emerson’s Jason Blackburn shares how: …two major challenges—water scarcity and water quality—are impacting access to clean…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Extending the Digital Twin for More Sustainable Power Generation

    Anyone paying attention to power—and probably even those who aren’t—are well aware that the way electricity is generated and delivered is rapidly changing. While the traditional combined cycle power facilities on the generation side we have come to depend on will be with us for a long time, new sustainable sources of renewable and distributed energy such as wind, solar, battery and green hydrogen are changing the grid…
  • Alternative Energy Blog: Ovation Users’ Conference: Addressing the Needs of Tomorrow’s Markets Today

    Day two of the Ovation Users’ Group conference opened with Jaime Foose , vice president of global sales and marketing for Emerson’s power and water solutions business, sharing how Emerson is addressing the needs of tomorrow’s markets today. Jaime emphasized that everyone is being challenged to make bold changes during these transitional times. We are doing just that by enabling versatile software and subscription models…