In a main-stage session at the Ovation Users’ Group, Glenn Heinl, Mike Ames, Nicholas Kozak, Kyle Lynch, and Emily Affare described how Emerson’s North America Projects, Services, Sales and Operations organization is moving from one-time project delivery to long-term performance partnership. Their message was plain: a project does not end when the breaker closes; it begins there.

From l to r: Mike Ames, Kyle Lynch, Emily Affare, Nicholas Kozak, Glenn Heinl

Presenters

• Glenn Heinl, VP, North America Sales, Projects and Services
• Mike Ames, Director, North America Projects
• Nicholas Kozak, Director, North America Services
• Kyle Lynch, Director, North America Proposals
• Emily Affare, Director, Guardian & Cybersecurity Solutions

Why It Matters

Power and water demand is growing at a pace the industry has not seen before, and every fuel source is on the table to meet it. Delivering a control system and walking away no longer fits that reality. Glenn framed the shift as a progression from communication to collaboration to partnership, one that can span decades. He pointed to a plant Emerson started up in March 1990 that is still running 36 years later after multiple upgrades.

Key Takeaways

• The relationship is meant to last. Emerson controls more than 40% of the hydro plants in North America and keeps systems like these current through repeated upgrades.
• Data centers are now the starting point for planning, and their sharp power swings demand a control platform built for reliability.
• New generation is booming. The team discussed roughly 120 combined cycle unit builds, with many more in various stages of planning, alongside battery, solar, wind, and coal retrofit work.
• Cybersecurity is foundational, and the Power and Water Cybersecurity Suite, paired with Guardian, extends protection across the full system life cycle.
• Small actions help. Running the system registration utility (SRU), keeping a disaster recovery plan, and staying current on patches let Emerson support you faster.

From Breaker Close to Partnership

Glenn set the tone by rejecting the old habit of celebrating a closed breaker and scattering. In his view, that moment is where the real work starts. He walked through the sequence Emerson wants with every customer: communication first, then collaboration, then a durable partnership, backed by support available any day and any hour.

Batteries make the point. Mike noted the team had put mid-double-digit battery projects on the ground in the last 18 months, and Glenn expects the count to double within a year. That volume is why Emerson now treats batteries less like a single project and more like a program that keeps going, adding unit after unit over years.

Data Centers Are Rewriting the Demand Curve

Mike explained why data centers now open nearly every conversation. Traditional facilities that run everyday office applications rely on hundreds of server racks driven by CPUs, which he compared to project managers that sequence and prioritize tasks. AI training centers use tens of thousands of racks driven by GPUs, which act like a room full of experts attacking a problem in parallel. That parallel work drives power up and down as the machines dive on a problem and back away.

The Ovation Automation Platform is built for that challenge, offering a platform Mike described as flexible, scalable, secure, and reliable, with availability of 99.999%, . Emerson has worked with   various vendors in the market, which matters because supply chain pressures often leave final vendor selection until close to execution. As Mike put it, the team is sometimes designing the plane as it taxis down the runway.

The Ovation Digital Twin now supports that earlier, helping shape design criteria and operating modes rather than arriving only after commissioning. For teams planning behind-the-meter or grid-connected sites, this is the foundation for data center energy management.

New Generation, Retrofits, Water, and Evergreens

The growth is not limited to data centers. Combined cycle units are being built in large numbers, and Emerson is designing AI agents so they are ready before a unit closes its breaker. Many are managed from remote operation centers. Meeting the workload takes people, so the team hired more than a hundred engineers in North America over the past 12 months and plans to add many more, using a cohort training program to bring them up to speed.

Kyle shared how the project quotation process to handle the growing demand is incorporating AI and experience-based templates to provide the necessary response times.

Retrofits are back too, including coal-to-gas conversions and upgrades of boilers 40 to 50 years old. Nick turned the focus to water, where about 12 billion gallons per day run under Ovation control. Water plants rarely get outages, so upgrades demand careful planning and customer workshops. On the installed base, Nick said Emerson completes over a hundred Ovation Evergreen projects a year and can upgrade from any Ovation version to the current Ovation 4.0. The Ovation View HMI can run alongside existing graphics, letting plants modernize gradually.

Cybersecurity and Support Across the Life Cycle

Emily made cybersecurity her first point, calling it foundational rather than optional. The Power and Water Cybersecurity Suite is modular, so it adapts as a plant’s security posture matures, and its designations and certifications give customers confidence in what they are getting. Guardian extends that protection through technical support, preventative services such as patching, and often underused consulting services that help teams adopt new technology and train people. As the tagline she cited puts it, the commitment does not end at startup; it grows throughout the system’s life cycle.

Looking ahead, Emily flagged the Cyber Resilience Act, a European Union regulation already influencing how cybersecurity is handled worldwide, which will require vendors like Emerson to provide more transparency around secure product design and stronger vulnerability guidance.

Glenn closed with the defensive plays that keep him up at night: build a disaster recovery plan, ask Guardian for a tabletop exercise, use the Ovation Curation Tool for change management, and rely on the playback recorder to trace what happened during a trip. Pair those with an uploaded SRU, and the support team can find answers fast.

Take the Next Step

Ready to turn project delivery into a lasting partnership? Explore the Ovation Automation Platform on Emerson.com to see how lifecycle thinking, integrated expertise, and disciplined execution can support your plant well beyond startup.