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, enables seamless replication to backup sites, and can be hosted on end-user infrastructure.
He next discussed the Ovation Green SCADA portfolio for renewable energy sources. Key parts of the portfolio include remote operations and application & connectivity flexibility to address the wide range of traditional and renewable plant and asset types.
Software-defined control (SDC) extends the flexibility of control strategies and locations, including water, grid, solar, and microgrid applications. SDC uses standard server hardware and supports all Ethernet Ovation I/O options and communication protocol suites.
The Ovation OMC100 controller and its software-defined I/O enable software configuration of the I/O channels to reduce project timelines due to late changes and enhance commissioning flexibility.
RSTi I/O for all Ovation controller variants enables PLC I/O on the Ovation DCS platform. And the family of stand-alone controllers includes Simplex OCC100, Redundant OCC100, OMC100, and OCR3000. Now any Ovation controller variant can be deployed as a standalone controller.
Rick highlighted Droplet technology, where a standalone controller can be adopted into a complete system. This technology eliminates data link interfaces and can have all points historized by Ovation Process Historians.
With the grid rapidly changing, having a complete portfolio of solutions is required to address this challenge.
Look for continual automation, simulation, and optimization innovations to address the rapidly changing distributed grid architecture.
