Although digital technology has pervaded industrial and postindustrial societies, power plants are not yet fully reaping its benefits. Many individual process control systems have gone digital, and even nuclear plants are beginning to apply the technology in nonsafety-related systems, but most have not reaped the full benefits of an integrated network.
In power plants, digital systems and networks dominate, or are common in, the functional areas of communications, security, operator support, and environmental health and safety. However, for the most part these key pieces of plant infrastructure are used and managed by separate (and, often, disparate) departments. Reason: The systems and networks were designed and implemented independently, with little if any thought to having them work in concert. Surprisingly, that’s often the case even for systems designed for new plants.
Case in point: At several U.S. nuclear plants, separate departments have deployed their own data networks throughout the facility, at significant cost. At one plant, the health physics department and the operations group actually installed separate fiberoptic networks at about the same time. Each project cost over a million dollars.
Although fossil-fueled plants are not as prone to “silo disease,” inattention to integration can lead to similar waste. More and more plant functions now can be performed better by digital systems, some with wireless capability. However, when different departments act unilaterally to satisfy their functionality needs, the result is multiple, incompatible networks.
Most designers of new fossil-fueled plants have come to realize that siloed functions and piecemeal integration are short-sighted tactics that produce islands of automation, which cannot deliver all of the benefits that digital technology offers. Segregating functionalities also works counter to a key goal of plant design: ensuring that data systems are robust, flexible, expandable, and upgradable well into the future.
It’s high time for the power generation industry to recognize that digital control and communications systems deserve to be linked by a plantwide data network (PDN). The PDN’s role is similar to that of the plant’s electrical distribution system: It provides the backbone and protocols to support all digital systems within the plant (and beyond, if it is part of a fleet). Just as you wouldn’t entrust your electrical buses to the corporate IT department (because—if for no other reason—real-time processing isn’t IT’s strength), the PDN should be designed and managed as a plant system, not just as another tentacle of the corporate IT network.
In addition to process control (distributed control systems, programmable logic controllers, etc.) and plant communications (public address, radios, cell phones, pagers, etc.), other functions that can benefit from linking to the PDN backbone include:
- Process monitoring (vibration and temperature sensors, chemical monitors, predictive analytics and diagnostic systems).
- Operator support (maintenance management systems, logs of shifts and rounds).
- Plant security (closed-circuit video cameras, access-control and personnel tracking systems).
- Supplemental monitoring/testing (nuclear dosimetery, portable radiation monitors, wireless sensors).
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