Pictures of the Future Spring 2005
Remote Services – Facilities and Power Plants
Service without Borders
More and more communication-enabled industrial facilities are being remotely monitored and optimized. Siemens specialists serve hundreds of facilities around the world via phone and Internet connections.
Remote maintenance and rapid assistance from experts leads to a significant reduction in downtime at power plants
Karlsruhe, Germany, 11:30 a.m.: "Hello Vales Point, this is the Remote Expert Center in Karlsruhe—I’d like to begin analysis," says Andreas Dobbertin, who is in charge of the Center, which is part of the "Service for Fossil Power Plants" unit at Siemens Power Generation Control Systems (PG L). Dobbertin takes a look at his world map on the left side of his double computer screen and clicks on a small city near Sydney where Vales Point is located. A browser opens on the right monitor and Dobbertin clicks "Connect." A few seconds later he sees the latest data from the Vales Point plant. "They’re not running at full capacity at the moment," he comments and points to the plant’s output, which is 440 MW for each block; the facility can produce up to 50 % more than that.
Also know as REC, the Remote Expert Center employs approximately 40 people who currently serve 140 customers worldwide, among them operators of combined cycle plants and hard and brown coal plants. Furthermore, the Center will soon be assisting operators of wind power stations. The REC offers a complete range of services, including remote fault repair, maintenance and administration. It also offers prevention and optimization—for example, at a geothermal plant in Kamchatka, Russia, where Siemens commissioned the control system iand set up a remote monitoring system (from Moscow).
Power plants (red) and power plant networks (blue) served by Siemens’ Remote Expert Center in Karlsruhe, Germany (right). The Center serves 140 customers
"In the past, we did not offer such extensive service contracts because the control technologies were analog and weren’t communication-enabled," says REC product manager Theo Rosch. "Furthermore, power plant operators used to be able to repair a lot of things themselves. But today, everything is digital, which means that remote service technologies can do a lot. On the other hand, things have gotten more complex. All in all, communication infrastructures have made remote maintenance a top service , and we as a manufacturer can now provide our combined expert knowledge to our customers."
Remote Assignments Around the World. The REC successfully solved some 4,800 control technology problems last year. Customers contacting the center for the first time are asked to provide basic information such as their name, the name of the plant in question, and a brief description of the problem. The call center staff then transfer the customer to the appropriate specialist, someone like Andreas Dobbertin, for example, who is now in the process of dialing into the Vales Point internal network. His screen switches to a window containing ASCII files. "These are the protocols for internal diagnostic data," he explains as he begins searching for the problem. He doesn’t need to rely on his specialized knowledge alone but can also access a database that contains documentation on similar incidents. That isn’t necessary this time, however, because the analysis of the diagnostic protocol shows that software for a specific control system component has failed. Working with the customer, Dobbertin then starts getting the software up and running.
PG L has two other service centers in the U.S. and Australia, "in order to provide better coverage in different time zones," Rosch explains. The RECs are networked with one another and their call centers can be reached around the clock. Staff not only speak German and English, but also Spanish and Russian, among others. Its experts specialize in control system problems because Karlsruhe is where such systems are designed and developed. "This means we can ask the development department for assistance in solving the problem at any time," says Rosch.
Reading from a distance
Up to five million mail items pass through the letter-sorting center in Vienna, Austria every day—for the most part automatically. The letters first go through a sorting machine that generates a digital image so that an optical character recognition system can read the address. This system achieves a definitive identification rate of 80 to 90 %. If the system fails to recognize an address, a postal worker has to decode the video image and manually type in the data—a time-consuming procedure. A barcode is then attached to the letter. But this process could soon be speeded up now that Siemens Logistics & Assembly Systems (L&A) has developed a remote reading system that improves identification rates and uses the Internet. A pilot project for the new system has been under way at the Vienna sorting center since mid-2004. In the project, addresses that cannot be recognized are sent via the Internet as encrypted image data to a reading and code center in Konstanz, Germany—which is 700 km away from Vienna. Here, they are decoded while the letter continues its journey on the conveyor belt in Vienna. The result is then sent back to the sorting center. The system is extremely fast, in most cases requiring less than two seconds. The current bandwidth of 2 Mbit/s makes it possible to identify 57,600 mail items per hour. Plans call for this rate to be increased to 24 Mbit/s, or 690,000 letters per hour. Customers are billed according to the number of addresses recognized. The advantage for customers is that they can make use of a state-of-the-art reading system without having to make any investments in equipment or personnel.
Diagnosing Turbines Online. Across the Atlantic in Orlando, Florida, employees at PG‘s Power Diagnostics Center (PDC) deal with issues relating to the muscles of the power plants (the turbines) rather than the brains (the control systems). Together with an additional center in Germany, up to 40 employees continuously monitor power plants that have long-term maintenance contracts. The key issue here is the condition of the gas turbine, in particular, the actual state of the turbine blades, combustion chambers and bearings, as well as temperature, pressure and vibration conditions—factors from which engine performance can be derived. "Continuous remote monitoring enables us to detect anomalies at a very early stage. This reduces the need for unscheduled repairs and cuts the number of unplanned outages, which result in losses of several hundred thousand euros per day," says Dr. Hans-Gerd Brummel, head of Power Diagnostics’ Research and Development and founder of the PDC. "It also lengthens plant service life, and can help ensure that an unplanned shutdown doesn’t last as long as it otherwise might—and can even keep such a shutdown from occurring. That’s important because shutdowns can cause hundreds of thousands of euros in lost revenues every day."
All of Siemens’ diagnostic centers use standard telephone networks for data transmission (via modem) as well as the Internet, which is available at any time and from any location. Regardless of where the centers are located, security is the top priority. Firewalls and encryption systems are standard. "The connection to the power station is always passive, which means the plant’s instrumentation and control system sends out data but cannot be affected by the outside world," says Brummel. "No customer would ever allow any active interference via a remote diagnosis connection." Most plant operators today therefore prefer to use ISDN modems, as these enable them to cut the connection themselves after a diagnosis has been made and the problem solved.
Over One Thousand Parameters. "Here in Orlando, we store gigabytes of data every day," says Brummel. That’s not surprising, given the complexity of the plants and the large number of sensors involved. For example, some 400 to 500 process measurements are used for the diagnosis of a gas turbine plant, and more than 1,000 parameters are incorporated into a diagnosis for a combined cycle plant.
All the raw data is scanned for viruses before experts examine it. If the data is found to be clean, it is automatically processed by a computer program known as PowerMonitor, which was developed in close cooperation with Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, New Jersey. PowerMonitor is a self-learning diagnostic system that analyzes all available measurements during a short training period to determine the correlations between physical parameters. For each measured value, an expected value can be generated by means of neural algorithms. The system automatically issues an alarm if the measured value for a parameter starts to deviate from the expected value. Later, when engineers analyze the root cause of the deviation, they are supported by a rule-based expert system.
Specialists at the Power Diagnostics Center in Orlando (left) discovered a crack in a gas turbine component (right) at a distance of more than 5,000 km, and were able to inform the plant’s operator before any major damage occurred
Service contracts are currently in effect for 80 power plants around the globe, with more than 180 gas turbines monitored on a continuous basis. "Remote monitoring pays off for customers," says Brummel. "But also for us," he adds, since warranty costs are significantly reduced by the timely diagnoses of anomalies and malfunctions. Indeed, Siemens saved tens of millions of dollars in this manner between 2001 and 2004. Savings for customers are even higher. PG’s customers aren’t the only ones who benefit from teleservice; other Siemens groups, such as Automation and Drives, Logistics and Assembly Systems, Building Technologies, and Communications also believe remote services offer great potential for their own business development. That’s why they established the Remote Services Initiative, which is designed to develop a platform with common applications—for administering customer data, accessing data via the Internet, or obtaining error reports. Plans call for this platform to be installed in a jointly operated service center, and to be easily accessible for employees and customers via the Internet. The basis for the platform is a platform that Siemens Medical Solutions developed and now successfully operates for its service package. A prototype is now being tested. The initiative also seeks to equip existing and future Siemens products with standard interfaces in order to make them teleservice-enabled. "I can imagine a remote process optimization system that could be used to increase the efficiency of a power plant or the production quality of a rolling mill, and also forecast the future condition of such facilities," says Hans-Jürgen Sauer, coordinator of the initiative’s working group.
Scientists at Corporate Technology in Munich have taken an important step toward being able to assess the condition of an industrial facility. Their PG AID program allows them to conduct machine and process diagnoses by using existing data from the control system and then determining the interrelationships between individual value measurements with the help of neural networks. The system can then calculate whether the unit or facility in question is deviating from its normal condition. PG AID was designed for on-site analysis, but the software can be reconfigured for remote diagnoses. Researchers are now testing a prototype at a pilot facility. Back in Karlsruhe, Dobbertin has switched off the connection to Vales Point. "Our customers can relax," he says. "On average, we will correct their malfunctions within less than 90 minutes."
Evdoxia Tsakiridou