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Electric utilities can uncover new potential in aspects such as security and efficiency by switching over to digital capabilities.
FREMONT, CA: As production efficiency attains more and more importance, electric utilities are looking towards the digitalization of facilities. Digitalization can support firms that are looking to streamline their processes. It can also enable optimization of workflow, condition-specific maintenance, and agile operations. A report mentions that energy-producing firms can improve plant efficiency by almost 3 percent. An extensive number of digital solutions today offer comprehensive benefits to the power plants. The impacts of digitalization on reshaping energy-production facilities and processes are enlisted below.
• Improvement in Energy Production Efficiency
The efficiency of an energy-production unit estimated based on heat rate. Enhancement in heat rate indicates that the facility requires less fuel, resulting in cost-savings as well as emission disposal. With digital tools and analytics solutions, stakeholders in electric utilities are today able to understand the causes inefficiency in performance, obtain insights on how to approach the challenges, and subsequently drive improvements.
• Gains in Maintenance
In the case of power plants, maintenance might be complicated, but it highly critical as well. Usually, there is a gap between the plans their implementations for day-to-day maintenance requirements. For instance, if a planned job fails due to the unavailability of tools and parts required for maintenance, the crew may expend time in assembling those parts. Companies can overcome this issue by deploying digital tools and dashboards to track workflows and plant components while enforcing best practices in maintenance.
• Better Safety Controls
Electric utilities house large and complex equipment and facilities in which even small glitches can have disastrous consequences. This makes it essential for power companies to have an efficient monitoring system that can provide visibility over the working of individual components. With digital tools, companies can realize such a system of connected devices. Subsequently, the data gathered from the digital devices can be leveraged to enhance security capabilities.
With the digitalization of power-producing facilities, electric utilities can achieve significant improvements, along with a more robust understanding of their operational workflow.
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