Predicting power demand to maintain stability and avoid damage and disruption to plant operations has become challenging. “We’re facing this looming crisis but solutions are 10 years out,” said Prudence Hoffman, portfolio director, integrated climate solutions, Honeywell, who spoke at Honeywell Users Group in San Antonio.
“A lot of people talk about energy transformation and energy scarcity. But energy demand is surging,” said Travis DeBenedetto, global vertical leader, power and utilities, Honeywell. “The biggest impacts have been data centers and crypto currency mining. These are energy dense and can be deployed rapidly.”
The energy infrastructure was built 50 years ago and is aging, warned DeBenedetto. It’s undersized and at end of life. “Because power can’t get to consumers reliably, some consumers are creating their own power sources,” noted DeBenedetto, who cited long lead times for grid expansion that are motivating industrial consumers to build their own, often renewable, sources. “’Prosumers’ are producing and consuming power to meet their own demands.”
Think of all the energy resources today, DeBenedetto suggested. “The utility needs to pull all of them together,” he said. “They need to centralize management. They need to integrate. Then they can look at ‘futurecasting’ to accurately predict when things will happen.”
The increase in power consumption coupled with a strained power supply causes decreasing power stability. “Power instability is costly,” said DeBenedetto.
Enter Honeywell’s Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS), a comprehensive portfolio that coordinates applications to optimize the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) to balance the grid and ensure stability.
DERMS can aid with the aggregation, translation, prediction and execution of services. It aggregates multiple DER services into manageable virtual resources aligned with grid configuration. DERMS can consolidate diverse languages and present them cohesively to the upstream entity and the DER. It can leverage big data from multiple sources, such as historical real-time SCADA systems, weather models, and forecast energy demand vs. supply. Based on the energy model, DERMS makes real-time decisions on when and where to deploy or remove DERs from the network.
“Some of you already have a microgrid,” explained DeBenedetto. “You already have a distributed control system and an energy management system, so you already have a SCADA system. Often, you’re communicating with the grid, so you can adjust production based on the grid.”
Industrial sites adversely affected
Grid evolution has impacted industrial sites significantly, as 54% of global demand is in industrial facilities, warned DeBenedetto. “Sustainability mandates can be met with electrification,” he explained. “And there’s been a 15-20% increase in industrial electricity rates over the past five years.”
Transient events, such as outages, can cause unplanned shutdowns, which can lead to damaged assets and interrupted works in progress. “This can mean loss of revenue, increased safety risks and damage to equipment,” explained DeBenedetto. “Whatever we can do to prepare for or reduce the transient events is a strategic advantage.”
As we deal with instability of the grid, it’s important to get ahead of the transient events, added Hoffman. This requires predicting, preventing and reducing them.
Honeywell Forge Asset Performance Management is one tool that can help provide early issue detection. Disruptions can also be prevented by directing plant automation systems to prioritize stable operations, by leveraging microgrids and battery energy storage systems, and by optimizing performance with gas and steam turbine controls.
“Instead of losing power and damaging equipment, we can employ dynamic load shedding,” suggested Hoffman. “Dynamic load shedding balances supply and demand during emergencies. It’s automated, fast and adaptive. It takes over when an emergency happens.”
Experion PKS provides real-time monitoring and control, alarm handling and data management, said Hoffman. “It’s highly scalable and integrates with smart field devices and applications,” she noted. Experion SCADA supports remote terminal units (RTUs), programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and third-party protocols.
Honeywell Ionic Control and Energy Management supports various energy sources, including DERs and provides autonomous control and peak prediction. It can be deployed on premises or in the cloud.
“Forge Performance+ for Utilities is all about grid balancing, looking at all of the generation assets and trying to balance these as a single unit,” explained Hoffman. “There’s a lot of instability in the grid. The grid is trying to balance those assets. It’s under a lot of stress. That’s a complex control reaction.”
