Emerson, the leading global automation and technology company, is updating its industry-leading Ovation automation platform with a software-defined architecture designed to help utilities better leverage emerging technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). This upgrade is designed to help these industries achieve new levels of operational excellence and meet the growing demand for reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy and water services.

Advancing the energy transition requires adaptive technologies

Today's advances in energy transition, global sustainability goals, and the "electrification of everything and everyone" are transforming the energy and water industries. These complex challenges require modern, adaptive technologies that connect previously disparate data to improve performance and availability and provide a holistic view of operations. Emerson's Ovation 4.0 automation platform is built on the Boundless Automation enterprise vision to integrate and deliver valuable reliability, safety, production, and sustainability data across the enterprise to optimize operations. Enhancements to the software-defined platform include advanced automation, simulation, and AI capabilities.

Keeping pace with rapidly changing markets

"Our next-generation platform will help modernize energy and water companies and develop forward-looking strategies to help utilities meet the evolving pressures in the industries," said Bob Yeager, president of the Energy and Water Supply division at Emerson. "Ovation 4.0 provides a single automation platform with real-time data that enables customers to keep pace with rapidly changing markets and gives them the insights to work smarter, better and faster."

Detailed insights into complex grids

Energy and water utility operators with a complex portfolio of distributed energy resources (DERs), including combined cycle power plants, wind farms, hydroelectric plants, solar arrays, battery storage, microgrids and stations, can rely on Ovation 4.0's grid-edge ecosystem to manage real-time, two-way input and deliver distributed data across their entire network, according to Emerson. Grid-edge controllers provide a more granular view of the grid through rapid, localized computing environments across DERs, and provide operators with rich data to improve load and demand management.

Promoting holistic awareness

Emerson's latest software-defined platform, Ovation, is part of a robust solution portfolio designed to future-proof utilities. It includes a full range of advanced pattern recognition and machine learning technologies for monitoring, controlling and optimizing assets. These technologies can be deployed in local or remote operations centers to centralize knowledge, predict maintenance needs and optimize operations. The new Ovation View human-machine interface and Ovation Green integration for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) provide a clear overview of operations and advanced analysis and forecasting tools. Ovation 4.0 integration with these new features is designed to improve holistic awareness in traditional and renewable power generation and energy storage, reducing costs while increasing plant safety, reliability and sustainability.

Enterprise-wide collaboration and on-demand support

In addition, the Ovation 4.0 platform offers generative AI models trained on secure, knowledge-based Ovation data that provide prescriptive guidance on operations and maintenance practices. Ovation's digital twin technology with AI models provides unlimited analytical computing power that enables data-driven decisions, enterprise-wide collaboration and on-demand support. All Ovation 4.0 technologies are also seamlessly supported by the Guardian digital customer experience, a single point of contact for real-time monitoring, in-depth analysis and actionable insights.

Access to a comprehensive technology ecosystem

"With our extensive portfolio, unified under the Ovation 4.0 automation platform, energy and water utilities now have access to a comprehensive technology ecosystem, unrivaled industry expertise, cohesive customer support, and decades of technical innovation and efficiency," said Yeager. "This expansion will help us strengthen our position as a leading partner and support our customers as they modernize with a software-defined architecture that offers the most advanced control systems without completely overhauling existing infrastructure."

Video