Posts Tagged ‘Power & Utilities’
September 24, 2020 – Control Station Engineer Recognized for Advancing State-of-the-Art in Process Optimization
Kevin Lord Josue Included in 2020 Class of Engineering Leaders Under 40 Control Station today celebrated the inclusion of Kevin Lord Josue among other notable recipients of Control Engineering…
Read MoreWatering Down Production for Increased Profits
Tightening control around Set Point will improve the performance and profitability of most every production process. This is especially true of drying processes applied by ethanol manufacturers to control moisture content. With reduced variability, ethanol producers are capable of improving quality and reducing energy consumption.
Read MoreFEBRUARY 2016 – HOW AN AUTO PARTS MANUFACTURER CUT CYCLE TIMES
The process industry’s objectives are simple: increase efficiency and throughput. Some process manufacturers are increasing productivity through technological innovations. Segments such as oil and gas and power have invested in…
Read MorePowering Up with Automatic Control
Electricity is an everyday necessity and while power generation is a $400 Billion industry in the US alone the availability of electricity is regularly taken for granted by consumers. Interestingly, power companies are often forced to err on the side of suboptimal control in order to assure availability of the electricity they generate.
Read MorePower & Utilities: Exposing Configuration Challenges
As an automation supervisor you trust each member of the team to do their job, but you also verify that the various tasks were done
right.
Get Competitive: Power
Optimizing Control for More Profitable Operation
Professionals in the process control world understand that “less” can often mean more. That is especially true when referring to reduced cycling within a given production process. Reducing oscillations and otherwise tightening constraints around the control objective can present a significant challenge. It also presents an opportunity to dramatically improve a plant’s profitability.
Read MoreModeling the Dynamics of Highly Oscillatory Processes
Optimizing heat rate is a critical success factor for most coal-fired power plants. Too little heat and the plant wastes the energy produced from bituminous coal and other costly production inputs. Too much heat and safety is put at risk – both the safety of production staff and of the plant’s production assets. Although optimizing a power plant’s injection water systems does not result in obvious financial gains, it plays an important role.
Read MoreIs Poor Control Wearing You Out?
In the power industry, the cost of replacing a single pump can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of new equipment cost, manpower, and system downtime. Changes to certain processes – if abrupt – can shave years off the expected life of valuable power production equipment. Even small variances in process stability shorten the Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) for most process instrumentation.
Read MoreA Stable Desuperheater Is Super Profitable!
Basin Electric Power Cooperative is a regional power generation and transmission company that services nine of the US’s plain states. As a consumer-owned cooperative, Basin Electric provides critical utility services to small communities too numerous to count. Like others in the power sector, Basin Electric is constantly on the watch for innovative ways of making a profit. In one of their more recent moves, Basin Electric looked to Control Station’s process optimization technologies and seized an opportunity to improve key production processes.
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