Managing power generation is complex even in the best of times, but with an emerging new energy economy, operations have become significantly more difficult. Today, organizations are not just trying to manage many different OEM versions of a single type of generation asset. Instead, they are combining multiple types of generation—solar, wind, battery storage, hydrogen, and more—and trying to manage them from the top down to maintain operational efficiency.
In a recent article in Automation World, James Fraser shares how this complexity has trickled down into energy projects. As organizations develop hybrid projects with many different interconnected asset types—sometimes even across multiple, distant locations—scale, size, and complexity of the projects increases dramatically. Planning to manage this complexity from the earliest stages of project development is critical, James explains. Fortunately, modern software makes that task significantly easier.
“Modern green energy supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, together with fit-for-purpose green energy human machine interfaces (HMIs), can be used to seamlessly standardize and aggregate essential data from the assets in the field, through the edge, and up to the enterprise—where they provide critical operational visibility.”
Data dependency
One of the key contributors to both success and complexity is data. If a generation site has dozens of assets from multiple different manufacturers, they might have a wide array of control technologies to work with. For operators, trying to navigate between many different control systems to monitor and manage operations is a herculean task. The same can be said for gathering data to track and trend performance and reliability.
The data is there—energy generating assets create loads of data—but when that data is siloed in many different systems, it’s far less useful. That’s where a purpose-built green energy supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system like Ovation™ Green SCADA comes in.
“A purpose-built green energy SCADA solution can support all an organization’s different technologies, with a single standardized, intuitive HMI for operator interface. The SCADA system replaces the need for complex, custom integration with seamlessly integrated automation from top to bottom, delivering data to a single place where it can be used to monitor key performance indicators and drive better decision making.”
Ovation Green SCADA both aggregates and contextualizes the data from a wide range of renewable generation and storage assets, providing operators with actionable intelligence so they can make fast decisions to drive operational excellence.
Better operations=stronger grid
Renewables are notorious for variability. A massive solar array may be overproducing today, while tomorrow it might be generating next to no energy at all. But the grid is built for stability. Excess energy must be curtailed, and energy deficits need to be supplemented. It is entirely possible to do so; however, such complex operation requires continuous insight and fast reactions—both of which are hindered when systems are siloed.
Once again, this is where a fit-for-purpose green energy software like Ovation Green SCADA shines. James explains,
“The visibility offered by green energy SCADA solutions with a single-source-of-truth HMI empowers operations teams to leverage real-time, historical, and predictive data to plan. Teams can adjust operations to ensure they run at the level that meets the needs of their contracts. Moreover, they can also make further adjustments, such as changing operations to protect individual assets to support longer equipment lifespans.”
Such a solution can also provide the real-time data necessary to give teams more options for grid stabilization. Ovation Green SCADA helps operators determine when it makes more sense to put energy onto the grid versus storing it. When properly engineered and configured, the software can help teams accomplish both energy management and energy trading.
Capitalizing on renewables
There has never been a better time to capitalize on the benefits of renewable generation. Modern green energy SCADA software makes it easier than ever to manage a wide array of generation assets to deliver increased flexibility, scalability, profitability, and operational excellence—all through the power of seamless data mobility.
