News

Artificial Intelligence to Boost Power Plant Predictive Analytics

December 06, 2017 by Paul Shepard

SparkCognition and Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas, Inc. (MHPS-Americas) are working together to advance artificial intelligence (AI) applications in MHPS-TOMONI™, a new digital platform from MHPS that optimizes power plant processes by enabling cognitive analytics and prioritizing customer collaboration.

MHPS is applying SparkCognition AI-powered solutions to combined cycle power plants as part of MHPS-TOMONI, providing additional value for MHPS customers by further automating predictive insights.

"MHPS-TOMONI focuses on providing value to customers by offering solutions that maximize power plant operations," said Shane Mickey, Vice President of Strategic Planning for MHPS Americas.

"MHPS partnering with world-class developers like SparkCognition to deploy AI software is further proof that MHPS-TOMONI leads the way in terms of digital solutions that boost plant performance for energy producers," Mickey continued.

MHPS-TOMONI utilizes a collaborative process to evaluate and apply digital solutions tailored to fit each customer's priorities at the power plants they operate. It moves today's power plants in the most cost-effective way toward the digital power plant of the future by emphasizing collaboration between the OEM and plant operator, recognizing the need for expert human insights from both, to boost efficiency and reliability, optimize O&M costs, and enhance environmental performance.

Derived from the decades of innovative technology, in-house O&M know-how, total plant knowledge, and customer partnerships, MHPS-TOMONI was created specifically for industrial applications and is focused on providing complete solutions by working together with customers.

SparkCognition and MHPS plan to scale and deploy solutions for predictive data analytics across every critical asset to further leverage AI-powered solutions.

"SparkCognition is leveraging AI to build sophisticated models automatically and deliver advanced data cleansing to identify anomalies in power plants," said Usman Shuja, General Manager of Industrial IoT for SparkCognition.

"Utilizing SparkCognition's predictive analytics platform, SparkPredict, on MHPS's clients' digital industrial infrastructure will maximize the MHPS-TOMONI suite of services by providing groundbreaking solutions for optimizing operations and maximizing output,” Shuja stated.

SparkCognition's unsupervised models will run on top of MHPS's industrial infrastructure to characterize the various behavioral states of major power plant equipment and systems. MHPS will use the SparkCognition models in their Orlando Remote Monitoring Center to offer their customers enhanced, AI-driven visibility into power plant processes.

"MHPS has teamed with SparkCognition to boost the MHPS-TOMONI Analytics Platform with applications that will further increase customer value, harnessing big data to enhance plant performance, improve availability and meet key performance metrics that are critical to driving success," said MHPS's Mickey.

"MHPS has been pioneering digital technology applications since the 1980s with its advanced digital control systems and artificial intelligence. We were leaders in developing sophisticated remote monitoring and diagnostics in the 1990s, and continue to drive the energy industry forward by incorporating SparkCognition's advanced AI systems into MHPS-TOMONI,” Mickey concluded.