Southeast Asia's power plants are getting an IoT upgrade

Southeast Asia's power plants are getting an IoT upgrade

Southeast Asian countries are adopting cutting-edge information technology
to improve the efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuel
power plants that the region relies on to meet surging energy demand.

Japanese trading house Marubeni and Global Power Synergy Co., an affiliate
of Thailand's national oil company PTT, have reached a basic agreement to
install sensors at existing power plants that will allow operational data to
be gathered and analyzed.

A gas-fired plant operated by GPSC in Rayong Province is the leading
candidate to become the first facility to receive the sensors. An artificial
intelligence system is expected to begin running after six months of data
collection. The system will notify managers about optimal operational
settings and failure risks to avoid unexpected shutdowns. Manufacturers of
electrical generators vie to improve efficiency by as little as 0.1%, but
"these digital systems are expected to reap far greater results," said
Masayuki Nishida, manager of Marubeni Thailand's power project division.

Smart power generation using internet of things technology is still a
rarity, even in advanced countries. This will be the first such project in
Thailand and is expected to cost several million dollars initially. GPSC
will introduce the system to other plants, depending on the results from
Rayong. The PTT group is eyeing internet of things technology for use in
industrial equipment beyond power plants.

"For the past 300 years, man has learned how to operate machines," said
Surong Bulakul, chairman of GPSC and an adviser to PTT. "The machines [have
become] cleaner and more reliable, but we still have to detect what is
happening to them [and handle] maintenance. The new technology will enable
the machines to tell us what to do. The machines will be operating by
themselves."

STAYING IN TOUCH Other countries are also working to harness such technology
in their power plants.

In July, Indonesian state-run power company PJB reached an agreement with
U.S. industrial conglomerate General Electric to introduce Predix, an
industrial internet of things platform, at 21 sites.

Several thousand sensors will be installed at each plant to collect data.
Analyzing the vast trove of information will allow operators to determine
the root causes of breakdowns, enabling the utility to "better predict and
prevent outages before they happen," according to GE.

Southeast Asia's six largest economies, including Indonesia and Thailand,
used roughly 900 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2016, a 60% jump
from 2007, according to statistics from U.K. energy company BP. The region
is on track to overtake Japan, which uses about 1 trillion kilowatt-hours
annually.

Although solar and wind power generation are growing in Southeast Asia, the
lion's share of electricity is still generated from the region's plentiful
coal and natural gas.

Most countries want to limit new equipment costs and are optimizing existing
plants to squeeze more power out of the same amount of fuel. Net energy
importers like Thailand are particularly concerned about efficiency,
according to one Japanese maker of heavy electrical equipment.

Japanese companies are also bringing internet of things technology to the
Philippines. Toshiba is supporting optimization efforts at local
conglomerate DMCI Holdings' Calaca power plant in southern Luzon. The two
companies signed a memorandum of understanding in July.

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, in partnership with Tokyo Electric Power
Co. Holdings, will introduce such technology at a conventional power plant
in Pagbilao, another municipality in southern Luzon. The failure detection
system has already been tested at a plant in Japan.

The two companies estimate that a 1% improvement in efficiency can save
several million dollars annually at a conventional power plant with an
output of 1 million kilowatts.

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Link to Original Article:
https://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20170907/Business/Southeast-Asia-s-power-pl
ants-are-getting-an-IoT-upgrade?page=1

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com