Modern wireless systems improve productivity, monitoring activities, and safety at power plants by enabling the right people to be at the right place at the right time. Wireless technology can put hard-to-access process and asset information at your fingertips, wherever you are, to enable more accurate and timely decisions.
Wireless technology offers benefits beyond wiring cost savings. With a multifunctional, plantwide wireless network, utility and power generation facilities can improve safety, reliability, and efficiency through optimized employees, equipment, and processes.
This overview is intended to assist power industry companies in exploring the many possibilities of using wireless technology in plant automation. It will help end users understand what to look for when selecting a wireless network for their requirements and will help them get started with this innovative technology.
Wireless Networks’ Benefits
Wireless technology has revolutionized network connectivity in the IT world as well as the commercial and consumer markets. Substantial growth in wireless networks is driven by standardization, industry investment, and research and development. Modern wireless applications and sensors deliver powerful new capabilities, enabling end users to improve operational performance. Wireless systems not only provide advanced sensing but also help users make decisions positively affecting their overall business objectives.
The advantages of wireless technology include helping plant operators gather field data more easily, increase asset life through continuous monitoring, and improve the safety of their most important assets — their people. Wireless technology also promotes improved plant availability, reduced downtime, and increased productivity.
As wireless technology gains greater acceptance, the wired world is slowly fading into the background. Protocols such as Wi-Fi represent the future, not only for traditional wired IT network requirements but also for monitoring and control applications across the plant floor.
In order to take advantage of all the benefits wireless technology has to offer, power plants must adopt sound policies mitigating risks and ensuring adequate security for processes, personnel, and the environment.
Business Advantages
Power plants implementing wireless systems do so for the same reason the first telegraph system was developed: cost savings. Utilities look to wireless technology to add real business value, both in terms of installation costs and optimized operations from increased data availability.
Just as Guglielmo Marconi’s invention, the radio telegraph system, eliminated the need to erect poles for wired communication, modern wireless solutions simplify installation requirements when compared with conventional wired networking, while also improving reliability and productivity.
An ultra-secure and ultra-reliable wireless field infrastructure supports not just wireless instruments but also wireless local area network (WLAN) applications under the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard 802.11 and mobile technology such as handheld computers and mobile human-machine interfaces (HMIs).
A single wireless network, supporting multiple wireless technologies and classes of service, can handle diverse tasks ranging from communicating sensor information back to a host system, to handling closed-loop control, information, HMI, video, communication, and enterprise applications. Wireless technologies developed for building management and security can also be utilized in process plants to support both asset management and personnel tracking.
Most importantly, wireless networks can be designed to support multiple communications protocols, as well as existing applications and standard transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) communications, so that legacy investments do not have to be discarded.
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