We are studying to build new thermoelectric power generators. As the CIO I’d like to influence this process (it has not initiated yet), by unifying operational data in order to: 1) increase the automatization of the plant - and reduce costs; 2) have this data available for further utilization (AI, Analytics, etc). One of the main barriers is that a thermoelectric has several pieces of equipment and each one has different software (and data) stack. How can we work with this challenge ? Does anyone have any insights/experience with that?

We centralized all the information to our Distributed Control System (DCS) with all our HMIs, SCADA systems throughout our control systems using Modbus or OPC-UA. We have some quite a few blackboxes for our aux systems, mayor instrumentations within DCS system and a smooth integration for our turbines HMI.

Control, instrumentation and data all are consolidated in our DCS and we exploit the data from the DCS historian or directly with OPC-UA signals.

We also use a OPC-UA integration solution that enable us to access the control signals outside OT systems, ie: EAM, APM, etc.

Faced a similar issue with different apps/platforms and database structures. At the end we solved using Dell Boomi (API) to collect (and transform data to a common structure), to then deposit in an SQL DB (depending on data a data lake can be used) and consume it there with PowerBI and now it can be AI. The challenge will be if the equipment is working stand alone and not as part of a network.. then I will recommend a manual extract and upload and suitable intervals, until connectivity and automation can be implemented on those devices.