Renewables

Emerson’s James Fraser on automation, optimizing data from renewables

Emerson is touting its Ovation Green platform, which the company says will drive faster, more informed decisions surrounding renewable assets.

Transitioning to cleaner energy systems or scaling up existing ones is a complex undertaking for power producers.

Companies may have purchased or brought various wind turbines, solar farms or batteries into their portfolios. They often ask Emerson how they can integrate the data points from all of these assets into one place for optimal decision making.

That’s where Ovation Green comes in. To learn more, Power Engineering sat down with Emerson’s James Fraser at the company’s Emerson Exchange Immerse event in Anaheim, California.

“I heard a phrase yesterday in the exhibition hall: Frankenstein automation,” said Fraser, who is Vice President for Global Renewables of Emerson’s Power and Water Solutions. “You’ve got all these disparate pieces of equipment. And what we do with Ovation Green is allow access to information which is completely independent of the OEM.”

Emerson was already known for its Ovation platform, a control and automation system designed to help power plant operators with real-time monitoring and control of equipment, processes and systems.

But as the market has shifted toward renewables in the last few years, the company has made a series of strategic acquisitions to augment its expertise and technology platforms.

This all led up to the launch of Ovation Green earlier in 2023.

“It’s that understanding of the customer and where their challenges are that are the most important,” said Fraser. “We have the technology, we have the software, we have the capability. It’s then, how do you put those things together?”

By gathering and contextualizing vast amounts of data from renewable generation and storage assets, Emerson says the Ovation Green platform will drive faster, more informed decisions to increase availability and production while reducing operations and maintenance costs. 

Fraser said customers will better be able to understand or predict an asset reliability issue or make better economic decisions for dispatching power onto the grid.

Because the platform was designed with renewables in mind, he said asset owners will be able to report performance data to regulators more seamlessly.

Asset information through Ovation Green could be housed onsite, at a fleet management office or in the cloud.

“We give that flexibility of choice, because everybody has a slightly different requirement,” said Fraser.

See the full one-on-one video above.

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