Executives from the energy, petrochemical, mills products, and, surprisingly enough, the data center arena recently gathered, at OSIsoft’s Executive Summit, to discuss the implications to their businesses of de-carbonizing the economy. Given the enormity of the topic, the group’s views and perspectives shared spanned a broad spectrum of subjects ranging from carbon credit trading to sustainable energy to the Smart Grid. One thing stood out: All eyes will be on the large infrastructure, automation, and controls providers for technologies that ease the energy squeeze. Software applications that can monitor and act on real-time asset performance data will have a significant role to play with most energy conservation opportunities stemming from the better use of smarter, more energy efficient assets. Manufacturers need to funnel some of that enterprise applications budget into their facilities, operational assets, and into a real-time information infrastructure to connect them sooner rather than later. Re-visioning EAM through an energy management lens For many companies, enterprise asset management (EAM) is still synonymous with the dispatch, management, and tracking of preventative maintenance activities, or the leaning out of spare parts inventories. But as companies are increasingly forced to view their assets though an energy management lens, they might discover a host of low hanging asset management opportunities in commonsense areas like building systems, facility, and power infrastructure management. Energy management touches nearly every aspect of the company, from data centers and fleets of mobile assets, to facilities and fixed production equipment. While there’s no magic software that will solve the energy management issue, companies are surrounded by countless opportunities to improve their energy consumption profiles by simply better monitoring and managing assets. Solutions are here today: building automation and control systems, environmental monitoring systems, maintenance systems, fleet asset management systems, and even the simplest power metering technologies. Enterprise asset management, in its broadest sense, must tie together these disparate islands of assets and their respective management processes into a cohesive framework that can, at a minimum, monitor the energy performance of the corporate grid, with an eye to conservation and efficiency. Outside of the asset intensive industries, the perceived expense associated with networking, instrumenting, and monitoring the health and performance of enterprise assets—save the most critical ones—has been a major roadblock for the deployment of such systems. As the cost of energy inefficiency skyrockets, which it will, these perceptions will change. Furthermore, after decades of skimping on capital investments, namely manufacturing assets and their supporting infrastructure, finding opportunities to improve energy efficiency is like shooting fish in a barrel. Don’t know where to start? Mike Manos, a senior director of data services for Microsoft who has worldwide data center responsibilities, suggests you begin with your data center. We also offer some thoughts on buildings and manufacturing assets themselves. Data centers: an expensive hot topic for equipment makers and facility managers A recently issued EPA report showed that data centers in the United States have the potential to save up to $4B in annual electricity costs through more energy efficient equipment, operations, and the broad implementation of best management practices. The Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency recommends a list of priority efficiency opportunities and policies that also offer companies the benefit of lower costs from using state-of-the-art technologies and operations. Three main findings from the report include: - Data centers consumed about 60 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006, roughly 1.5% of total U.S. electricity consumption.
- The energy consumption of servers and data centers has doubled in the past five years and is expected to almost double again in the next five years to more than 100 billion kWh, costing about $7.4B annually.
- Existing technologies and strategies could reduce typical server energy use by an estimated 25%, with even greater energy savings possible with advanced technologies.
For the past five years, a rise in computer usage, and the power and cooling infrastructure that supports them, has doubled energy use, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and raised concerns about power grid reliability. While technology providers like EMC, IBM, and HP have been targeting data center energy efficiency for a number of years now, the magnitude of the data center energy consumption conundrum can’t be tackled without industry collaboration. Enter the Green Grid (www.thegreengrid.org), a consortium of technology companies whose mission is to “lower the overall consumption of power in data centers around the globe.” The members list for this organization is a who’s who of the computing technology world, but you’ll also see names like Eaton, GE, OSIsoft, and Siemens—the same names you might expect on the roster for your process manufacturing facility. This should come as no surprise, and energy conscious corporate consumers should also look up ABB, Emerson, Honeywell, and Rockwell Automation. While this is a departure from the standard set of application providers so familiar to the corporate IT world, the bottom line is that carbon neutrality is going to take more than an investment in software. Companies need to seek out the real-time monitoring and control system experience of the same folks who provide life support systems for the space shuttle, keep refineries in control during startup, and provide end-to-end environmental monitoring and control for the most sensitive biotech manufacturing facilities. In short, infrastructure, automation, and controls providers with experience in building automation and infrastructure (HVAC, safety, water, power systems) control have a pivotal role to play in the unfolding energy management saga. Smarter buildings are greener buildings The idea of smart buildings has been evolving for nearly three decades. What makes a smart building so smart? There’s generally a building automation system: a system that incorporates a network of sensors to monitor ambient conditions like temperature, humidity, gas composition, movement, outdoor temperature and lighting, and that responds to sensor data by controlling the behavior of the HVAC, lighting, and safety systems. These systems increasingly incorporate smart metering components for electricity and other utilities, giving facility managers the decision support tools they need to reduce overall energy use. Toronto Pearson International Airport employs a system developed by Johnson Controls, Inc. that allows its Airport Traffic Information Management System (ATIMS) to control lighting and heating at gates as air traffic controllers update flight information. When a flight is due to arrive at a gate, the lights in the gate area go on, and ventilation flows into the area. Shortly after a flight departs, gate area lighting is dimmed and the ventilation is reduced. Another smart building case study shared at this year’s M2M (for machine-to-machine) United Conference looked at a major hotel chain that employed Tridium, a building automation and controls provider that’s now part of Honeywell, to connect asset operating data into a centralized data repository for the purposes of monitoring occupancy, calculating energy consumption levels and metrics, and monitoring the performance of key operational systems. A web-based management dashboard provides an overview of hotel occupancy for the week, an overview of staffing loads, maintenance task schedules, and overall energy consumption for critical assets like chillers, ovens, water filtration, and pumping stations. This aggregated view of information allows hotel managers to optimize maintenance routes, control in-room temperature based on occupancy, and identify sources of waste with respect to power consumption. The hotel, which has since received an energy star rating (the first hotel ever to do so), saw energy costs cut 25% during the first year the monitoring system was operational. While this particular hotel adopted a wired approach to sensing the state and performance of assets, wireless sensing technologies are maturing to the point where retrofitting an existing facility with peel-and-stick sensors that feed a centralized data repository are becoming feasible. The Kodak Company has been implementing an energy efficiency initiative for nearly two years. Working in conjunction with historian provider OSIsoft and SAP, Kodak’s initial work monitored the output and performance of two power plants on Kodak’s Rochester, NY campus. The analysis of real-time power generation and loading data (real-time asset performance data was acquired and stored in OSIsoft’s PI historian) allowed Kodak to implement a campus-wide energy conservation program, re-optimize its generation capabilities, and ultimately serve the needs of the campus with only one of the original power plants. How about smarter manufacturing assets? So if buildings can be so smart, why not our manufacturing assets? As it turns out, equipment OEMs, automation, and controls providers are working on a variety of energy conscious innovations in the areas of variable frequency drives, air compressors, boilers, increasingly sophisticated control systems, and distributed generation technologies which are highly efficient, small-footprint technologies that allow manufacturers to produce high quality power at the point of use with a variety of fuels including wind, biomass, and solar. Keep an eye out for intelligent assets as well. In an effort to overcome objections around retrofitting aging facilities with extensive network infrastructure, automation and controls providers are increasingly designing wireless broadcast capabilities into their devices, each of which has its own IP address. Wireless sensors are also starting to make an appearance. There are still issues around standards, price, and battery life to be resolved, but industry is working through these with a spate of enthusiastic early adopters. Looking forward, this technology landscape lays the groundwork for scenarios in which individual assets can report their existence, location, health, and other operating information to the broader network. This information is then available for consumption by higher level applications that manage maintenance, monitor performance, monitor energy consumption, and even moderate the activities of and between the assets themselves. Consider these examples: - One company is using intelligent devices to remotely monitor the condition of blowers in grain silos.
- Another company uses a wide network of sensors to monitor the operation of lighting installations. In this case, the lights in question are large, located at the tops of very tall buildings, and monitored by the FAA. Failure to report and correct an outage within a specified time window results in severe penalties, not to mention the associated risk to air traffic.
- Other companies are experimenting with the deployment of blended sensor networks to monitor and control the composition of gas, temperature, and humidity levels within oceangoing shipping containers over the Internet. In this case, the cargo is fresh produce.
We’re even aware of a large West Coast municipality that’s piloting a system to monitor parking spot vacancies by installing smart meters curbside with the long-term goal of moving to variable meter rates based on parking spot supply and demand. Tackling this kind of asset management challenge almost makes condition monitoring look easy. Shifting from asset maintenance management to asset performance management Today’s EAM strategies, like so many of the assets being managed, are a legacy of economic conditions and resource assumptions that have long outlived their usefulness to the enterprise. Investments in the intelligent management of assets from an energy consumption and margin contribution perspective offer tremendous untapped opportunities to the business. But realizing this potential requires a fundamental shift away from the accounting view of assets as depreciable sunk costs. Today’s view needs to be more enlightened, seeing assets as competitive advantage. Energy management is shaping up to tip the scales in this direction. Who can help? Asset performance management, when viewed through the lens of energy management, is a broad arena that presents opportunities for technology providers ranging from device manufacturers, controls vendors, infrastructure providers, software application providers, and even the utilities companies. Foundations geared at monitoring and analyzing energy consumption are critical. Here’s a look at some of those working in these areas: Historians We’ve written in the past about the role of historian technology in the asset performance management equation. Expect to see companies implement historians from providers like OSIsoft, GE Fanuc, Honeywell, Invensys, and others to acquire data from wired, or wireless, metering devices as a way to snapshot and assess the performance of their assets, whether it’s a punch press or a chiller tower. Understanding peak load behaviors and identifying major power consumers is the first step in formulating an energy management strategy. OSIsofts’ partnership with Rockwell Automation uniquely positions it to proliferate historian technology as part of the control or device infrastructure. Pervasive real-time data storage like this will facilitate the capture of real-time asset performance information, laying the foundation we spoke of earlier. Honeywell, a premier provider of building automation and controls systems is another company to watch. Its Honeywell’s integrated approach combines not only asset and environmental, but safety system monitoring as well. SCADA Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems from Citect/Schneider, GE Fanuc, Invensys, and Rockwell, as well as many other automation and software providers will play a prominent role in energy conscious architectures, particularly in highly automated environments. Citect recently unveiled a SCADA system that specifically targets facility operations as an alternative to more extensive and services intensive building automation and controls offerings. Operations intelligence plus With a foundation of real-time asset information in place, opportunities abound for software applications that can layer on operations intelligence, advanced process simulation, predictive modeling, and energy management analytics and reporting capabilities. AspenTech, Invensys/SimSci, Meridium, Pavilion Technologies, pVelocity, and Incuity to name just a few, are well positioned to help companies not only identify savings, but also top-line opportunities as well. The ability to conduct near real-time scenario analysis allows the business to make informed decisions about what and when to produce based on factors like current energy costs and carbon credit markets. EH&S providers like ESP, ESS, Enviance, Perillon, and SAP (through the Technidata-developed xApp for Emissions Management, xEM) also have a role to play, albeit on the emissions management side of the equation, with offerings designed to help companies manage the complexities of emissions calculations and monitoring. EnterpriseAsset Management EAM application providers like Avantis (an Invensys company), IBM/Maximo, Infor, Oracle, SAP, and Ventyx have a role to play in this energy ecosystem too; but only if they can provide operational metrics and financial insights that help users make informed decisions about the operation and maintenance of their assets. Moving to demand-based performance management approaches from meter-based maintenance will require today’s EAM providers to forge relationships with vendors that can provide access to real-time information about energy consumption, asset status, and asset contribution to product and operating margin. EAM applications are well positioned to become the aggregators of facility, fleet, asset, and data center asset-performance information, but must be prepared to add operational intelligence to their products. Read more about it For further reading on the subject of asset performance management, the asset management landscape, and the role of operations intelligence in creating performance centered approaches to asset management, we recommend the following:
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