We Energies uses real-time information for maintenance and operations
We Energies, a midwestern energy utility that serves over one million electric customers in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula and 990,000 natural gas customers in Wisconsin, is using Lighthammer’s Operational Excellence platform to provide real-time information and visualization from its operational systems to its power plant employees.
We Energies , a midwestern energy utility that serves over one million electric customers in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and 990,000 natural gas customers in Wisconsin, is using Lighthammer ’s Operational Excellence platform to provide real-time information and visualization from its operational systems to its power plant employees.
The idea of providing real-time information across the company for better decision-making began when the Public Service Commission granted We Energies approval in 2003 to construct two new power generation facilities. As part of the planning process, the new facilities were to provide greater capacity while introducing minimal incremental human resources. While planning for the technical support of these plants, a list of critical initiatives was created, the first of which was to make equipment and system information available to everyone, anywhere, anytime.
We Energies began using the Operational Excellence platform to provide users at every level of the power plant organization real-time, personalized views of information from any data source within the extended enterprise. The company’s objective is to improve operation and maintenance of the equipment to reduce cost and improve reliability and availability. Data will be extracted from sources such as process control systems, historians, emission monitors, SAP, lab analysis systems, and other business-related systems. The resulting real-time information infrastructure will provide We Energies the ability to respond to demand shifts, commodity price changes, and process upsets.
For more information, visit the Lighthammer and We Energies Web sites.
—David Greenfield, editorial director, Control Engineering, dgreenfield@reedbusiness.com
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