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Historically, the Indian power sector has been characterized by power cuts, economic losses, system inefficiencies and archaic last mile networks.  

India has seen extraordinary successes in its recent energy development, but many challenges remain, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major disruption. While the sector has been undergoing an overhaul over the last few years, the pandemic underscored the need for an accelerated technological upgrade.  

Going forward, focusing on digital transformation will help enhance this seemingly traditional, manpower-heavy sector into a smarter, more efficient power system. This will enable each element in the value chain to reimagine its processes and streamline infrastructure. 

Power plants often suffer from a lack of visibility into operations and an inability to take predictive action to avoid reliability, safety and compliance issues, as the data needed to operate the facility can be scattered and siloed. To overcome this, power plant operators need a connected ecosystem that provides a platform to help ensure operational intelligence, enhance safety and meet internal and external regulatory compliance. 

The digital transformation of operations in power plants gives operators much-needed tools to address many issues that can jeopardize a safe and efficient production operation. 

By converting manual procedures to a digital environment, plant workflows improve; that means you can better manage regulatory compliance, including safety and environmental regulations. 

The major benefit of a digital ecosystem is that it reduces operational risk. Many incidents in the power industry begin with human error, and the more you improve processes with digital transformation, there is more chance that human error will be reduced. 

For power plant operators, quick access to the most up-to-date information in a digital twin for operations from the plant floor to the boardroom enables better decision-making, improved business processes, enhanced productivity and reduced operational risk. 

According to Gartner: “A digital twin is a digital representation of a real-world entity or system. The implementation of a digital twin is an encapsulated software object or model that mirrors a unique physical object, process, organization, person or other abstraction. Data from multiple digital twins can be aggregated for a composite view across a number of real-world entities, such as a power plant or a city, and their related processes.” 

To help companies achieve these digital twin benefits, Hexagon's Asset Lifecycle Intelligence division provides interoperable solutions throughout the asset lifecycle. Digital twins — for example, a digital twin for engineering and a digital twin for operations — and the digital thread — that connects multiple digital twins throughout the asset lifecycle — is the glue that connects these enterprise solutions and their data on one platform, enabling a single version of the truth concept. Digital twins can be built gradually using Hexagon solutions in different stages to prevent barriers to adoption. The extent of digital twin maturity required is based on the level of digitalization already in place at an organization. 

Overall, the goal of any digital twin is to increase asset efficiency and offer a digital representation of current and historic plant configurations, along with related performance information. Enlightened, data-driven decision-making becomes the norm, and the easy sharing of digital twin data with multiple departments increases collaboration and reduces operational risk.  

Another important aspect of digitalization in power plants is shift operations management. Inadequate shift operations management is often highlighted as a contributory factor in plant accident investigation reports by industry and government agencies. A digital shift operations platform allows teams to efficiently create logbook entries, manage tasks, acknowledge orders and collect and analyze data in real time throughout their shifts to address anomalies and communicate effectively with incoming shift teams. 

Automatic and instantaneous information empowers workers, keeping them connected and focused, freeing their time and ensuring clear communication during safety-critical activities. 

j5 Shift Operations Management provides a tried-and-tested digital solution with spreadsheet-like configurability and enterprise scalability. This comprises the j5 Operations Logbook, j5 Shift Handover, j5 Standing Orders, j5 Work Instructions and j5 Event Manager. It also includes j5 IndustraForm® Templates and the j5 IndustraForm Designer. 

If you want to know more about our solutions, please visit the j5 Shift Operations Management website, or reach out to our team in India.