Egoli Gas saves 95% of personnel time and energy through automated network monitoring
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South Africa supplies two-thirds of Africa’s electricity and is one of the four cheapest electricity producers in the world.
Almost 90 percent of South Africa’s electricity is generated in coal-fired power stations. Koeberg, a large nuclear station near Cape Town, provides about 5 percent of capacity. A further 5 percent is provided by hydroelectric and pumped storage schemes.
Generation is dominated by Eskom, the national, wholly state-owned utility, which also owns and operates the national electricity grid. The rolling load-shedding due to lack of power generation capacity has triggered much criticism but a combination of improved maintenance initiatives and a slowing economy have largely dealt with the problem. In addition, the commissioning of the Medupi and Kusile power stations within the next five years will further improve the situation.
But it’s not stopping there. A multitude of privately-owned companies have seen the gap in the market and are implementing many wind and solar generation facilities (e.g. 54 solar plants and 38 wind farms that are either operational, under construction or planned).
With regards to gas, South Africa produces 970 million cubic metres/year and has proven gas reserves of over 27 million cubic metres.
Challenges facing the Power and Gas utility industry
Knowing about and controlling large, geographically-dispersed assets and networks
This is the nature of the business which, in South Africa, depends on the location of coal mines, wind power and solar availability. But decentralising human expertise to cope with issues isn’t possible due to the short supply of that expertise. One answer is the centralisation of knowledge but this requires special data gathering and information extraction technologies.
- System Platform
- Historian – tiered
- InTouch
- InTouch Access Anywhere
- MDT AutoSave
- Intelligence
- Flow
- Skelta BPM Workflow
Making decisions based on accurate
Aggregating and contextualising data from multiple, disparate sources is mandatory in order to provide operators at the plant level and management at the corporate level the same and accurate picture of reality in real time.
- Historian
- Intelligence
- Flow
- MES/Operations
- SmartGlance
Cyber security
Energy is a primary strategic resource and the number one target for anyone wanting to impact a country’s economy and security.
- System Platform
- InTouch
- Historian
- Intelligence
- Flow
Improved safety
Whether it’s the operation or maintenance of generation sets with their attendant boilers or the erection of wind turbines, safety is an all important aspect of this industry and informing operators and technicians in the field on mobile devices is becoming the norm.
- System Platform
- InTouch Access Anywhere
- SmartGlance
Emissions control
With the great majority of South Africa’s power drawn from coal, emissions control has become a highly-significant issue, especially with respect to international agreements.
- System Platform
- Historian
- Historian Client
- InTouch
- Information Server
- Alarm Advisor
System availability and effective maintenance
Power and gas generation and distribution include complex process entirely dependent on the availability of a lengthy chain of machinery. Traditional calendar-based protocols have been shown to be less effective than demand-based systems for many aspects of this industry.
- MES/Performance
- PRiSM
- MDT AutoSave
- IntelaTrac
Customer Stories
Eskom
Enhanced remote monitoring of Africa’s only nuclear power station helps Eskom engineers
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Eskom Emission Monitoring
Eskom conforms to legal emission limits with help from Wonderware
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