Emerson’s Ovation Automation Offers AI-Powered Grid Management

Emerson has released the Ovation 4.0 Automation Platform, an updated version of its Ovation Automation Platform. The update includes a new software-defined architecture to help utility operators improve operations by leveraging edge processing, data, and artificial intelligence.

As modern grid operations become increasingly complex due to rising power demands from electrification, aging infrastructure, and the proliferation of distributed energy resources, utilities must operate more precisely and efficiently than ever.

The Ovation 4.0 Automation Platform builds on Emerson’s larger Boundless Automation vision. It is designed to help utility operators access and employ the data distributed across systems to improve their operations’ reliability, safety, efficiency, and sustainability.   

Demonstration of Ovation 4.0. Image used courtesy of Emerson

Intelligent Edge Automation Solutions

Emerson’s edge devices and cloud software solutions are designed to introduce data integration and transparency into industrial operations. Solutions are built on intelligent edge devices deployed to field sites that collect, process, and share data with the larger industrial ecosystem. 

From the edge, data can be transmitted to the cloud and across data silos, where operators can use it to develop a more cohesive and comprehensive system view. However, decision-making is not restricted to a centralized location. Distributed processing (intelligent field) capabilities allow faster, localized decision-making at the point closest to the problem.  As a software-defined platform, edge and other intelligent hardware modules within the system can be configured remotely via software. 

Boundless Automation concept. Image used courtesy of Emerson

According to Emerson, a Boundless Automation vision will impact their industrial customers through better and faster decision-making and more robust and efficient operations. 

Managing a Dynamic Grid

Leveraging and expanding upon the capabilities of the Boundless Automation vision, Emerson’s Ovation platform is designed specifically for the needs of the power and water industry.

With the rapid incorporation of renewables and other distributed energy resources (DER), grid operations are becoming far more complex and dynamic. Load changes within power delivery systems have traditionally been predictable, following standard daily patterns. But DER, like solar microgrids or vehicle-to-grid chargers, do not follow set patterns in their interactions with the grid (sourcing or sinking power) and can change daily and hour to hour. 

In this highly dynamic environment, centralized grid management paradigms are often inefficient enough to keep up with the necessary decision-making and require high staffing levels to fill the gaps. For Emerson and the company’s power customers, grid edge controllers are the solution.   

Ovation grid edge controller. Image used courtesy of Emerson

Leveraging AI for Utility Operations

Within the Ovation Automation Platform, grid edge controllers push decision-making beyond the centralized control room to the field, where they can assist in managing DERs and other dynamic loads locally and in real time.

Grid edge controllers also help to organize the larger data picture for centralized operators. As opposed to raw data streams from distributed systems, edge controllers relay processed data in the form of information to operators, bringing more clarity to operations.  

Visualizing renewable sources. Image used courtesy of Emerson

The new Ovation 4.0 release takes the concept to the next level, introducing a scalable software-defined architecture that leverages artificial intelligence capabilities for even more robust analysis and decision-making and the ability to adapt, learn, and improve over time.  

According to Bob Yeager, President of Emerson’s power and water business, the upgrades in Ovation 4.0 will help modernize power and water operations, releasing predictive capabilities to assist utility operators in managing an increasingly dynamic and challenging operating environment.