Merging top-down and bottom-up planning approaches

This weblog sequence discusses the advanced duties vitality utility firms face as they shift to holistic grid asset administration to handle via the energy transition. The primary publish of this sequence addressed the challenges of the vitality transition with holistic grid asset administration. The second publish on this sequence addressed the built-in asset administration platform and knowledge change that unite enterprise disciplines in numerous domains in a single community.

Breaking down conventional silos

Many utility asset administration organizations work in silos. A holistic strategy that mixes the siloed processes and integrates varied planning administration programs supplies optimization alternatives on three ranges:

1. Asset portfolio (AIP) stage: Optimum venture execution schedule
2. Asset (APMO) stage: Optimum upkeep and alternative timing
3. Spare half (MRO) stage: Optimum spare components holding stage

The mixed planning workout routines produce budgets for capital expenditures (CapEx) and working bills (OpEx), and set minimal necessities for grid outages for the upcoming planning interval, as proven within the following determine:

Asset investments are sometimes a part of a grid planning division, which considers expansions, load research, new clients and long-term grid necessities. Asset funding planning (AIP) instruments deliver worth in optimizing varied, typically conflicting, worth drivers. They mix new asset investments with current asset replacements. Nevertheless, they observe totally different approaches to threat administration by utilizing a threat matrix to evaluate threat in the beginning of an optimization cycle. This top-down course of is efficient for brand new property since no details about the property is obtainable. For current property, a extra correct bottom-up threat strategy is obtainable from the continual well being monitoring course of. This course of calculates the well being index and the efficient age primarily based on the asset’s particular degradation curves. Dynamic well being monitoring supplies up-to-date threat knowledge and correct alternative timing, versus the static strategy used for AIP. Combining the asset efficiency administration and optimization (APMO) and AIP processes makes use of this enhanced estimation knowledge to optimize in actual time.

Upkeep and venture planning happen in operations departments. The APMO course of generates an optimized work schedule for upkeep duties over a venture interval and calculates the optimum alternative second for an current asset on the finish of its lifetime. The upkeep administration and venture planning programs load these duties for execution by subject service departments.

On the upkeep restore and overhaul (MRO) facet, spare half optimization is linked to asset criticality. Failure mode and impact evaluation (FMEA) defines upkeep methods and related spare holding methods. The principle parameters are optimizing for inventory worth, asset criticality and spare half ordering lead instances.

Conventional planning processes deal with disparate planning cycles for brand new and current property in a top-down versus bottom-up asset planning strategy. This strategy results in suboptimization. An built-in planning course of breaks down the departmental silos with optimization engines at three ranges. Optimized planning ends in decrease outages and system downtime, and it will increase the environment friendly use of scarce assets and finances.

Read more about IBM® Maximo® APM for Energy and Utilities