- Transparency. Users must opt in, and no data is collected without their explicit approval.
- Protection. Data security measures are regularly improved to protect collected data against loss and unauthorized access.
- Value creation. Data is used to add value to customers, such as by improving safety, reducing ownership cost, checking and maintaining product health, enhancing service quality, and driving development of better products.
- Respect for data rights. The same data privacy and security policies apply to service vendors and other third parties who may work with customers’ data.
Within the genset user’s operation, data is password-protected; only authorized persons have access and managers can define what level of data rights each person has.
A Look Ahead
Today’s SCADA and remote monitoring systems feature interfaces with two-dimensional graphics, alarms and alerts, and simple overviews of operating data. The arrival of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) make such presentations seem primitive by comparison, like first-generation video games.
VR and AR help users process and contextualize data by presenting it in three dimensions. For remote troubleshooting, for example, it is already possible for an engineer at a remote monitoring provider to have a digital twin of a genset on screen, overlaid with machine data. Meanwhile, a technician stands in front of the physical genset, but with a matching 3D image on a tablet computer, again with machine data overlaid. This kind of collaboration can significantly help the two parties talk through, contextualize, and solve problems.
On a grander scale, there is movement toward a virtual power plant where remote expects can digitally “walk through” the facility and discuss issues with maintenance and operations teams. Travel and training cost are significantly reduced.
Beyond monitoring, maintenance, and operations, VR and AR hold potential to attract younger people into the distributed power industry. Increasingly, newer generations expect VR and AR to be part of their work environment.
Irrespective of those developments, remote monitoring for distributed generation is here to stay. Given its relative simplicity and low cost and the value users can derive, it has become an essential tool for extracting the maximum business advantage from distributed power applications.
