Instrumentation & Controls

Power plants were among the leaders in implementing distributed control systems (DCSs), starting in the 1980s with systems based on mini-computers and continuing through the turn of the century. Although many

Mention the word “drone,” and most people will have a mental picture of what a drone is and does. They likely will think first of military drones carrying missiles and other weapons that could malfunction

Source: POWER During IHS CERAWeek in Houston in early March, POWER Editor Gail Reitenbach sat down with Heiner Markhoff, president and CEO of GE Power & Water’s Water & Process Technologies, to ask him about several issues of concern to power plants.  Though the “water/energy nexus” theme has gained prominence recently, Heiner Markhoff’s comments underscored […]

Great River Energy (GRE) is a not-for-profit electric cooperative that generates and transmits power for 28 member cooperatives throughout southern, central, and northern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin

In power plants with drum-type boilers and constant-speed main boiler feed pumps, the feedwater control valve (also referred to as the drum level control valve) provides the means for controlling flow to the

Cybersecurity has become a topic of interest over the past year in generation, owing to new developments in North American Electric Reliability Corp. Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) regulations

It seems as if each week brings further bad news for coal power plants. Recently, Consumer’s Energy sought relief to close three power plants, South Carolina Electric & Gas announced it would cease

In an email interview with POWER, Xue Wei, manager for Emerson Process Management Power & Water Solutions, China Business Development, provided some insight into the current state of control systems for Chinese power plants. His responses, edited for style, follow. POWER: How widespread are “state-of-the-art” control systems (yours and others) in new generating plants in […]

Training simulators are worth their weight in gold to the power industry, as well as to most process industries in general. People tend to learn the fastest and the most thoroughly when hands-on trial and

Aging human machine interface (HMI) hardware will eventually become a burden on plant operation. Obsolete HMIs can cause problems with connectivity, historical data loss, and hardware failure. As the hardware