NEWS RELEASE SEPTEMBER 2016
The “Hurry up” Pace for Flow Control and Treatment
Jeffrey Immelt of GE has called upon industry to adopt the same “hurry up” pace endemic to Silicon Valley. This statement was made in conjunction with the initiative to maximize the value of information communicated by machines. This information can be used to improve operations and maintenance. GE outlines impressive advantages of massive machine to machine communication. This leads to speculation that the information generated by pumps, valves, fans, etc. could be worth more than the equipment itself.
McIlvaine is currently conducting a series of webinars for a large U.S. utility which is considering optimization systems offered by GE, Siemens, Emerson, Doosan and others. Better machine communication can contribute a NOx reduction of more than 10 percent. However, since the utility needs to achieve at least 70 percent reduction at four plants, optimization will only be part of the strategy. It now appears that the most cost effective solution is a combination of five or more technologies.
For this specific project the solution could involve the GE NeuCo optimization system in Massachusetts, the GE combustion (CE) in Connecticut, the GE (formerly Betz) treatment chemicals in Pennsylvania and the GE (formerly Alstom/CE) scrubbing technologies (Tennessee and Sweden) along with changes in wastewater treatment and maybe even ZLD as furnished by the GE water groups in Minnesota, Washington and other areas. The utility has to determine the best interaction of all these technologies. GE also has to maximize the communication among its own technology providers who, as previously independent companies, are not part of a seamless operation.
The series of webinars using the McIlvaine Global Decisions Orchard http://www.mcilvainecompany.com/Decision_Tree/subscriber/Tree/Default.htm is demonstrating the value of organization and decisive classification but also a “hurry up” pace through the power of the wise crowd. The utility will likely choose a unique combination of technologies which had not been envisioned at the beginning of the two-month webinar series. Unexpected input from many different sources has made a major contribution to the likely choice.
The Wikipedia entry for the wise crowd provides the following criteria:
| Wise Crowd Criteria | |
| Criteria | Description |
| Diversity of opinion | Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts. |
| Independence | People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them. |
| Decentralization | People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge. |
| Aggregation | Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision. |
All these criteria have been met with the webinar and Decision Guide approach used on this project. McIlvaine intends to take full advantage of the wise crowd in the future.
For more information on the specific Decision Guides being used by power plants for flow and treatment decisions, click on:
44I Power Plant Air Quality Decisions
59D Gas Turbine and Combined Cycle Decisions
For more input on how wise crowd initiatives will be used to help various suppliers, click on:
N028 Industrial Valves: World Market
N027 FGD Market and Strategies
