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Asia Getting Smart With IoT

Southeast Asian countries are adopting cutting-edge information technology to improve the efficiency and environmental impact of fossil fuel power plants that the region relies on to meet surging energy demand.

Japanese trader Marubeni and Global Power Synergy Co., an affiliate of Thailand’s national oil company PTT, have reached a basic agreement to install sensors at existing power plants that will allow operational data to be gathered and analyzed.

A gas-burning plant run by GPSC in Rayong Province is the leading candidate to become the first facility to receive the sensors. An artificial intelligence system is expected to begin running after six months of initial data collection. Plant managers will be notified about optimal operational settings and failure risks to avoid unexpected shutdowns. Power generator makers vie to improve efficiency by even just 0.1%, but “these digital systems are expected to reap far greater results,” said Masayuki Nishida, manager of Marubeni Thailand’s power project division.

Smart power generation using “internet of things” technology is still a rarity, even among advanced nations. This will be the first such project in Thailand and is expected to cost several million dollars initially. GPSC will introduce the system to other plants depending on the results from Rayong. The PTT Group is eyeing internet of things technology for industrial equipment beyond power plants.

“For the past 300 years, man has learned how to operate machines,” said Surong Bilakulm, chairman of GPSC and an adviser to PTT. “The machines became cleaner and more reliable, but we still have to detect what is happening to them [and handle] maintenance. The new technology will enable the machines to tell us what to do. The machines will be operating by themselves.”

Other countries are also working to harness such technology in their power plants.

In July, Indonesia’s state-run power company PJB reached an agreement with General Electric to introduce Predix, an industrial internet of things platform, at 21 sites.

Several thousand sensors will be installed at each plant to collect data. Analyzing the vast trove of information is seen revealing the root causes of breakdowns, enabling the utility to “better predict and prevent outages before they happen,” according to GE.

Southeast Asia’s six major economies, including Indonesia and Thailand, used roughly 900 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2016, a 60% jump from 2007, according to statistics from BP. The region is on track to overtake Japan, which uses about 1 trillion kilowatt-hours annually.

Although solar and wind power are spreading in Southeast Asia, the overwhelming majority of electricity is still generated from the region’s plentiful coal and natural gas resources.

Most countries want to limit new equipment costs and are optimizing existing plants to squeeze more power out of the same amount of fuel. Net energy importers like Thailand hold a particular interest in efficiency, commented one Japanese heavy electric machinery maker.

Japanese companies are also bringing internet of things solutions to the Philippines. Toshiba is supporting optimization efforts at local conglomerate DMCI Holdings’ Calaca power plant in southern Luzon. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding in July.

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, in partnership with Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings, will also introduce such technology to a conventional power plant in Pagbilao, another municipality in southern Luzon. The failure detection system has already been tested at a plant in Japan.

The two companies estimate that a 1% improvement in efficiency can save several million dollars annually at a conventional power plant with an output of 1 million kilowatts.

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