At the 2024 Ovation User Group Conference, Emerson’s Corey Moniot presented Ovation Curation Tool–Maintain Control of Your Simulation. Here is his presentation abstract.
The Ovation Curation Tool application provides a streamlined way to maintain version control and detailed change history between one or more Ovation systems and simulators. It manages and accounts for changes and merges of assets over time to manage assets and maintain history of changes to the Ovation database between the production Ovation system and the simulation environment.
This presentation will focus on:
- Overview of the Ovation Curation Tool within a digital twin simulator.
- Tracking changes between the production and simulation environments.
- Process of synchronizing the points, graphics, and logic differences while maintaining the data.
- Method of merging edits from multiple people working on the same assets.
- Provide a live demo showing the use of the tool.
Corey opened by sharing the benefits of the Ovation Digital Twin Simulation for use as a power plant simulator. It includes:
- Improves operator efficiency
- Enables better decision-making
- Simplifies configuration
- Promotes in-house self-maintenance
- Provides access to service from one vendor
- Increases reliability
- Streamlines lifecycle management
- Supports the ability to comply with new NERC requirements
- Assists with meeting cybersecurity obligations
Simulators can quickly become outdated and require significant maintenance efforts. To address this challenge, the Ovation Curation Tool was developed to streamline version control and detailed change history between one or more Ovation systems/simulators. The Curation Tool also manages and accounts for changes and merges of assets over time.
It takes advantage of proven technology for change management and synchronization and:
- Tracks changes to the system over time, whether still in use or not (backups)
- Allows for checking and verification of changes before reconciliation
- Provides visual indication of changes to the configuration of the production and simulator systems
The Curation tool automates the migration of changes from production to simulator systems and allows you to view the differences between the two systems. You can individually review merge conflicts before the curator synch. It’s important to note that only offline changes are captured, not online signal diagram tuning changes. One use case is to use the Curator as a standalone system to track changes made by your control engineer.
Here’s a look at the Curator’s synchronization function.
To enable Upload, all master changes must be synchronized into the local repository. You can’t upload to the global repository if you aren’t synced with it first. This approach helps prevent unintended action.
To use the tool, use comparison tools to understand better all changes that need to be merged. Clean up the simulator system to avoid merge conflicts. Include what is needed in the ignore file. Also, make sure there are patch compatibilities between the simulator and the Ovation system.
In summary, the Ovation Curation Tool:
- Leverages a commercial off-the-shelf product with a proven reliability record
- Manages and organizes the volume of changes in Ovation terms. (i.e., points or graphics)
- Doesn’t impact your Ovation control system
- Workflow is simplified into two operations: sync and upload
- Provides access to details of both outstanding and historical changes
- Highlights specific disruptions caused by outstanding changes, both local and global
More information will be provided as this tool moves closer to full release.
