New Power Management System Aims to Help Facilities Reduce Outages
Image courtesy of Ken Teegardin under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.
A new power management system, formed via the integration of 2 separate platforms, promises to help facilities reduce outages and improve restoration times. Not only are the platforms being integrated different, but they are also from separate companies. Now that’s what I call utopian cooperation!
Development of the New Power Management System
The two systems and companies are Schneider Electric, which is contributing its Schneider Electric EcoStruxure Power Operation system, and ETAP, which is contributing its ETAP Operator Training Simulator system. The first one provides power system intelligence, and the second one helps companies transform this intelligence into action.
The goal of the integrated system is to help personnel analyze power equipment performance against a variety of operating scenarios, as well as to help operators develop contingency plans by utilizing simulations that essentially stress-test the system. The integrated system combines an electrical digital twin with SCADA to improve efficiency by collecting & analyzing data.
Why is this integrated power management system so important? Well, the main reason is because the companies claim that 40% of unplanned power shutdowns are due to operator failures. In addition, power outages can cost certain end users millions of dollars in losses – for example, a typical oil & gas system loses $3 million per outage, and an 8-hour outage can cost a hospital $1 million.
While these costs are not directly borne by the utility serving the facility, anything that can be done to reduce customer impact from an outage can only help from a reputation and regulatory perspective. Simply put, the ability to keep tabs on the system metrics in real time, and identify and react to potential problems quickly, is the holy grail of emergency preparedness, no matter if it’s the utility itself or a large C&I customer.
In the final analysis, if this new power management system – and others like it – can do this, then we will ALL be better off!
