Obstacles Energy Companies Face in Managing Their Physical and Digital Asset Ecosystems

Rapid urbanization and population growth have driven up energy demand. This has created a need for creative methods that increase productivity with the same resources. Asset and energy management enable smart networks to meet increased demand and maximize value. Thus, rising energy consumption drives energy and utility asset management adoption.

FREMONT, CA: As the market for renewable energy continues to expand, businesses must invest in the long-term health of their green assets to ensure that they continue to generate new, greener energy. In addition, dealing with assets in capital-intensive industries such as energy has become more complicated due to uncertainties associated with extended asset life, remote inspection and maintenance, and other environmental factors. When administering a large, aging, and dispersed infrastructure of assets, energy companies need help.

Let's examine some of them!

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Significantly high capital expenditures are associated with the energy industry. Moreover, it is anticipated to increase considerably as the renewable energy market aggressively expands. In light of the massive investments in the energy sector, the assets must be maintained to assure profitability and longevity. Traditional unstructured asset management is not the most effective method for administering enterprise assets, which can result in the following issues:

Insufficient Asset Visibility: Lack of real-time asset visibility hinders understanding of their condition and the criticality associated with them. The conventional energy generation process, which is highly complex, often needs help with low productivity due to frequent asset failures (such as high voltage pumps, transformers, and generators), resulting in extended downtime. A just-in-time asset maintenance strategy could have prevented this issue. This can only be accomplished if asset defects can be perpetually monitored and repaired before the onset of a potential failure.

Improper Operation: The asset's performance and service life is impacted when operated outside its intended operating range. Due to the accumulation of carbon soot or ash particulates on the superheaters of a coal-fired power plant's boilers, the boiler's operational performance frequently degrades over time. Other essential assets connected to the furnace combustion mechanism exhibit a comparable performance decline. In these circumstances, inefficient combustion and unreliable energy production result from poor asset management.

Scalability: Asset performance is the primary asset management responsibility in the renewable energy sector. When limited resources are available, this task is easy. However, reserve judgment until the assets reach the hundreds of thousands. Numerous components, such as inverters, combiner units, sensors, etc., must be managed, which presents many asset management challenges, particularly regarding scalability. Scalability is a term used in the IT industry to describe a software program's capacity to manage an increasing workload. Most systems accessible to RE asset managers are obsolete and designed solely for fundamental monitoring needs. These tools fail miserably when expanded asset management is incorporated as an additional burden.

Documentation Errors and Legal Liability: During the facility's engineering, construction, and operation phases, energy and utility facilities must adhere to many regulatory requirements. However, the manual nature of regulatory management makes it difficult and susceptible to regulatory violations, which can have negative financial and legal consequences.

Inefficient Human Resource Management: When managing asset defects with a reactive asset maintenance method, managing and scheduling the appropriate resources at the proper location and time takes a lot of work. This is notably evident in the energy sector, which requires a wide variety of individuals with diverse skill sets. The unexpected timeframes that result from this strategy have a negative effect on employee motivation.

Over/Under Asset Maintenance: Lack of asset health knowledge results in unanticipated process failures, unplanned maintenance and repair, and inefficient resource utilization. A reactive approach to asset maintenance is an unmistakable indication that the assets are not being maintained correctly. Sometimes, scheduling frequent maintenance to resolve this issue indicates over-maintaining assets. Both of these alternatives lack financial viability.

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