Case study: the implementation of a data-driven industrial analytics methodology and platform for smart manufacturing

Integrated, real-time and open approaches relating to the development of industrial analytics capabilities are needed to support smart manufacturing. However, adopting industrial analytics can be challenging due to its multidisciplinary and cross-departmental (e.g. Operation and Information Technology) nature. These challenges stem from the significant effort needed to coordinate and manage teams and technologies in a connected enterprise. To address these challenges, this research presents a formal industrial analytics methodology that may be used to inform the development of industrial analytics capabilities. The methodology classifies operational teams that comprise the industrial analytics ecosystem, and presents a technology agnostic reference architecture to facilitate the industrial analytics lifecycle. Finally, the proposed methodology is demonstrated in a case study, where an industrial analytics platform is used to identify an operational issue in a largescale Air Handling Unit (AHU)

IAMM: A maturity model for measuring industrial analytics capabilities in large-scale manufacturing facilities

Industrial big data analytics is an emerging multidisciplinary field, which incorporates aspects of engineering, statistics and computing, to produce data-driven insights that can enhance operational efficiencies, and produce knowledgebased competitive advantages. Developing industrial big data analytics capabilities is an ongoing process, whereby facilities continuously refine collaborations, workflows and processes to improve operational insights. Such activities should be guided by formal measurement methods, to strategically identify areas for improvement, demonstrate the impact of analytics initiatives, as well as deriving benchmarks across facilities and departments. This research presents a formal multi-dimensional maturity model for approximating industrial analytics capabilities, and demonstrates the model’s ability to assess the impact of an initiative undertaken in a real-world facility

Optimization of distributed energy resources in an industrial microgrid

This paper introduces a model of an industrial microgrid with distributed energy resources (DERs). The model is applied to an existing manufacturing facility in Ireland. The test facility is connected to the main electricity grid but also has onsite generating units; a wind turbine and a combined heat and power (CHP) unit. The model generates a facility load forecast using historical data. A scenario analysis is then performed to investigate the effect of operating DERs, including demand response (DR), on carbon emissions and energy costs in an industrial microgrid. An energy storage component is then introduced and the viability of installing this technology is investigated

A systematic analysis of real-world energy blockchain Initiatives

The application of blockchain technology to the energy sector promises to derive new operating models focused on local generation and sustainable practices, which are driven by peer-to-peer collaboration and community engagement. However, real-world energy blockchains differ from typical blockchain networks insofar as they must interoperate with grid infrastructure, adhere to energy regulations, and embody engineering principles. Naturally, these additional dimensions make real-world energy blockchains highly dependent on the participation of grid operators, engineers, and energy providers. Although much theoretical and proof-of-concept research has been published on energy blockchains, this research aims to establish a lens on real-world projects and implementations that may inform the alignment of academic and industry research agendas. This research classifies 131 real-world energy blockchain initiatives to develop an understanding of how blockchains are being applied to the energy domain, what type of failure rates can be observed from recently reported initiatives, and what level of technical and theoretical details are reported for real-world deployments. The results presented from the systematic analysis highlight that real-world energy blockchains are (a) growing exponentially year-on-year, (b) producing relatively low failure/drop-off rates (~7% since 2015), and (c) demonstrating information sharing protocols that produce content with insufficient technical and theoretical depth

Cluster analysis of wind turbine alarms for characterising and classifying stoppages

Turbine alarm systems can give useful information to remote technicians on the cause of a fault or stoppage. However, alarms are generally generated at much too high a rate to gain meaningful insight from on their own, so generally require extensive domain knowledge to interpret. By grouping together commonly occurring alarm sequences, the burden of analysis can be reduced. Instead of analysing many individual alarms that occur during a stoppage, the stoppage can be linked to a commonly occurring sequence of alarms. Hence, maintenance technicians can be given information about the shared characteristics or root causes of stoppages where that particular alarm sequence appeared in the past. This research presents a methodology to identify relevant alarms from specific turbine assemblies and group together similar alarm sequences as they appear during stoppages. Batches of sequences associated with 456 different stoppages are created, and features are extracted from these batches representing the order the alarms appeared in. The batches are grouped together using clustering techniques, and evaluated using silhouette analysis and manual inspection. Results show that almost half of all stoppages can be attributed to one of 15 different clusters of alarm sequences

Automatically identifying and predicting unplanned wind turbine stoppages using SCADA and alarms system data: case study and results

Using 10-minute wind turbine SCADA data for fault prediction offers an attractive way of gaining additional prognostic capabilities without needing to invest in extra hardware. To use these data-driven methods effectively, the historical SCADA data must be labelled with the periods when the turbine was in faulty operation as well the sub-system the fault was attributed to. Manually identifying faults using maintenance logs can be effective, but is also highly time consuming and tedious due to the disparate nature of these logs across manufacturers, operators and even individual maintenance events. Turbine alarm systems can help to identify these periods, but the sheer volume of alarms and false positives generated makes analysing them on an individual basis ineffective. In this work, we present a new method for automatically identifying historical stoppages on the turbine using SCADA and alarms data. Each stoppage is associated with either a fault in one of the turbine's sub-systems, a routine maintenance activity, a grid-related event or a number of other categories. This is then checked against maintenance logs for accuracy and the labelled data fed into a classifier for predicting when these stoppages will occur. Results show that the automated labelling process correctly identifies each type of stoppage, and can be effectively used for SCADA-based prediction of turbine fault

Enabling effective operational decision making on a Combined Heat and Power System using the 5C architecture

The use of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) to optimise industrial energy systems is an approach which has the potential to positively impact on manufacturing sector energy efficiency. The need to obtain data to facilitate the implementation of a CPS in an industrial energy system is however a complex task which is often implemented in a non-standardised way. The use of the 5C CPS architecture has the potential to standardise this approach. This paper describes a case study where data from a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system located in a large manufacturing company was fused with grid electricity and gas models as well as a maintenance cost model using the 5C architecture with a view to making effective decisions on its cost efficient operation. A control change implemented based on the cognitive analysis enabled via the 5C architecture implementation has resulted in energy cost savings of over €7400 over a four-month period, with energy cost savings of over €150,000 projected once the 5C architecture is extended into the production environment

Diagnosing and predicting wind turbine faults from SCADA data using support vector machines

Unscheduled or reactive maintenance on wind turbines due to component failure incurs significant downtime and, in turn, loss of revenue. To this end, it is important to be able to perform maintenance before it's needed. To date, a strong effort has been applied to developing Condition Monitoring Systems (CMSs) which rely on retrofitting expensive vibration or oil analysis sensors to the turbine. Instead, by performing complex analysis of existing data from the turbine's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, valuable insights into turbine performance can be obtained at a much lower cost. In this paper, fault and alarm data from a turbine on the Southern coast of Ireland is analysed to identify periods of nominal and faulty operation. Classification techniques are then applied to detect and diagnose faults by taking into account other SCADA data such as temperature, pitch and rotor data. This is then extended to allow prediction and diagnosis in advance of specific faults. Results are provided which show recall scores generally above 80\% for fault detection and diagnosis, and prediction up to 24 hours in advance of specific faults, representing significant improvement over previous techniques

The suitability of machine learning to minimise uncertainty in the measurement and verification of energy savings

Accurate energy modelling is a critical step in the measurement and verification (M&V) of energy savings, as a model for consumption in the baseline period is required. Machine learning (ML) algorithms offer an alternative approach to train these models with data-driven techniques. Industrial buildings offer the most challenging environment for the completion of M&V due to their complex energy systems. This paper investigates the novel use of ML algorithms for M&V of energy savings in industrial buildings. This approach enables the extension of the traditional project boundary also. The ML techniques applied consist of bi-variable and multi-variable ordinary least squares regression, decision trees, k-nearest neighbours, artificial neural networks and support vector machines. The prediction performances of the models are validated in the context of a biomedical manufacturing facility to find the optimal model parameters. Results show that models constructed using ML algorithms are more accurate than the conventional approach. A 51.09% reduction in error was achieved using the optimal model algorithm and parameters. The use of a higher measurement frequency reduced the spread of error across the six models. However, further analysis proved the use of more granular data did not always benefit model performance. Results of the sensitivity analysis showed the proposed ML approach to be beneficial in circumstances where missing baseline data limits the model training period length