For years, simulation has been a core technology for effective and efficient testing and training. Live digital twin simulation duplicates a physical plant, creating a dynamic digital replica that allows users to operate the controls and receive clear results and feedback as though they were in the live plant.
“It’s a virtual representation of a system that can be created in the simulation space. With the digital twin, you gain all sorts of very valuable benefits. You can test planned control strategies, evaluate startup and shutdown procedures, examine malfunctions and abnormal behaviors and more.”
At the 2025 Ovation™ Users’ Group Conference, Emerson’s Jonathan Ore and Nolan Scanlon performed a deep dive into the Ovation Digital Twin, a power plant simulator integrated with the Ovation control system. Jonathan and Nolan shared how a digital twin enables faster plant startups and unit load changes, reduces abnormal situations and unplanned outages, provides offline testing and dynamic verification of control logic modifications, and enables evaluation of a plant prior to final design and construction.
Fit-for-purpose functionality
However, not all digital twin simulation software is the same. Jonathan and Nolan explored how the fit-for-purpose Ovation Digital Twin gains advantages by being embedded in the industry’s most reliable and responsive process control system. The Ovation Digital Twin offers levels of capability bolt-on solutions cannot match.
First and foremost, the Ovation Digital Twin supports complex modeling and real-time simulation of a user’s operating and engineering environments, integrating natively with the Ovation control system and leveraging high fidelity Ovation algorithms based on first principles. That native integration allows the system to be configured and maintained far more easily since the digital twin uses the same, familiar engineering tools as the Ovation plant controls, eliminating the need for complex, custom-engineered connections.
“You’re not limited to just one specific fidelity. We can provide whatever fidelity is needed for your specific requirements or environment.”
Seamless connectivity between the control system and the digital twin software offers many benefits such as dynamic parameterization, where changes in model parameters are learned and updated from actual plant system operation. This enables the digital twin to capture degradation of plant equipment. The plant system controller can also save snapshots of real-world conditions that can easily be loaded into the digital twin for postmortem analysis and operator training.
“So, in a specific scenario, if you’ve caused an event, you can grab a snapshot—before, during, or after—then you can load it back later for comparison and evaluation.”
Online state estimation enables the digital twin to reflect unmeasured variables in plant equipment, which can serve as input to both operational and predictive maintenance analytics. And because the Ovation Digital Twin can provide faster than real-time closed-loop simulation, teams can use it to capture controller states in real time, and then “fast forward” to receive predictions of key process variables.
“You can calculate state estimations for prediction analytics, and you can even simulate faster than real time variables to see how things would respond in the future.”
Smart Grid Extensions
Another benefit to the Ovation Digital Twin is the availability of Emerson’s Smart Grid Extensions. Smart grid extension software expands and evolves the digital twin to help teams manage the interconnected nature of the many distributed generation systems necessary to support the modern, reliable energy grid.
“With the smart grid extensions, we’re able to look at transmission as well as distribution, and it’s capable of handling those unbalanced polyphase power systems.”
Ultimately, smart grid simulation extensions will include electrical power transmission, distribution, and distributed generation. The software seamlessly integrates with existing Ovation environments and tools to provide a suite of algorithms including:
- Voltage Source
- Bus
- Transmission Line
- Load
- Electronic Load
- Reactor
- Capacitor
- Transformer
- Voltage Regulator
- Storage
- PV System
- Generator
- Induction Motor
- Wind Turbine Generator
Moreover, additional algorithms and variations can be designed and built from the existing fundamental models to further customize Ovation Digital Twin Smart Grid Extension capabilities.
Jonathan and Nolan also announced the release of the Smart Grid Tools —a new add-on to the Ovation Digital Twin smart grid extensions. Smart Grid Tools allow users to conduct analyses and studies of smart grid networks in real time, including the Hosting Capacity Study, which provides insight into the maximum amount of renewable energy generation a distribution feeder can support before incurring adverse system operating conditions. In addition, they announced the development of a range of other tools.
“We’re also looking at adding load studies and fault studies, as well as providing different tools to perform network health monitoring and network performance.”
The best tools deliver the best results
While simulation is a critical tool in the power generation and distribution toolbox, not all solutions are created equal. Modern, fit-for-purpose solutions like the Ovation Digital Twin dramatically reduce complexity and deliver better results through seamless, native integration with the control system and powerful simulation tools delivering the capabilities teams need to manage the evolving smart grid.
