Utilities face increasing demands in delivering power reliably, economically and safety. Fuel price volatility, coupled with increasing focus on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, environmental taxes and changing market regulations are just some of the challenges. SentientSystem® has automation, advanced control and asset management solutions that allow fewer operators to make better decisions, while reducing operating and maintenance costs, and improving environmental performance.
SentientSystem is an integrated suite of modules specifically designed to address boiler, boiler cleaning, turbine cycle and unit optimization. At the heart of SentientSystem lies the high fidelity SentientModel, a first principle, high precision thermodynamic model which contains self learning algorithms which continually ensure that a high fidelity and current plant model is available to support all optimization and asset management modules. This approach significantly reduces the configuration and maintenance effort and allows all modules to work from a shared data set.
The following components are integrated into SentientSystem:
SentientBoiler - is a comprehensive advanced boiler control application which optimises combustion and stabilises reheat temperature reducing the need for attemperator spraying and burner tilt changes. It also reduces emissions and increases boiler efficiency.
SentientBoilerClean - provides fully automated intelligent and dynamic sootblowing, resulting in less steam use and combustion disturbances. Both SentientBoiler and SentientBoilerClean automatically adjust for changes in coal quality.
SentientTurbine - optimises the turbine operation in its current configuration increasing the cycle heat rate.
SentientDispatch - works through the unit set point to dispatch the next most economic unit of power, maximising station efficiency.
SentientPerformance - provides real-time monitoring and KPI reporting to both operators and asset managers, and identifies actions to bring operations back on track.
SentientAlert - provides effective early warning of developing faults for all plant and process units including boiler, turbine, cooling systems, mills, all rotational equipment, as well as monitors critical instrumentation.
SentientCause - utilizes a framework of first principle technologies which detects very small process changes over time to analyze and diagnose plant component deterioration very early, allowing effective intervention and preventing forced outages.
SentientExpert - leverages limited expert knowledge allowing asset managers to capture and code complex fault patters identifying these to the operator, thus allowing them to mitigate or avoid developing problems.
SentientAssetLife - is a real-time asset life calculation system which incorporates detailed stress, damage and remnant life calculations based on a metal fatigue model. Alerts can also be provided on instantaneous stress and depreciation rates.