Technical Forum
Sharing Digital Solutions in Technical Forum
To enhance decision making in operations, Power Systems Engineering department hosted a technical forum to share digital solutions.
Digital technologies are transforming the safety, reliability, and efficiency of the energy industry, and the Power Systems Engineering Department (PSED) recently hosted a virtual Technical Forum titled “IR 4.0 Solutions toward Excellence in Electrical System Reliability and Maintenance,” to highlight digital solutions that are having a significant impact in operations.
Power Systems executive director Hasan J. Al Zahrani inaugurated the forum, telling attendees, “To drive business growth, we need to stay vigilant toward the age of digitalization and automation, as those two are the key concepts of reaping productivity and profit gains.”
PSED manager Jobran A. Refai told participants that PSED’s objective is to create value for its customers and to improve asset reliability and maintenance.
The forum included 10 technical topics associated with implementing IR 4.0 technologies on generation, transmission, and distribution assets across the PS’s value chain.
Digital Twin
Like a virtual mirror, a digital twin reflects the state of a physical asset and helps to optimize the design and operation of a device, predicting future faults with the goal of reducing or eliminating unplanned outages.
“The goal of a Digital Twin is to automate complex engineering tasks so that the results are always at your fingertips to improve decision making,” said Bobby Noble, a digital twin expert from EPRI.
Optimized General Dispatch
This innovation provides optimized generation dispatch for the Shaybah power grid, and has been fully completed in-house.
In their presentation, Michael Burke, a PSED engineer, and Muhannad A. Al-Mulla, a power dispatch coordinator at Shaybah Power Dispatch, said the optimized tool helps Shaybah decision makers to dispatch sufficient generation to meet user-specified power demands.
The forum highlighted digital solutions that are having a significant impact in our operations.
Robotic Process Automation
Ahmed Alssaggaf, Jawahir Al-Shalfan, and Hani Alhashimi, experts from SEC shared how their company had implemented robotic process automation (RPA) to automate enterprise processes in financial transactions. RPA handles the repetitive, routine, and structured processes and other important and sensitive work. By employing RPA solutions, companies can save time and money while allowing the employee to handle meaningful tasks that require human experience and problem solving capabilities.
Intelligent Maintenance Recommender System
Developed by Yokogawa, the Intelligent Maintenance Recommender System recommends actions for new defects, said Abdullatif Alnajim and Abrar Alamoudi, Yokogawa representatives.