The Porto de Sergipe plant in Brazil, like many power-generating assets worldwide, still requires a significant skilled workforce – usually more than 20 people on site – to operate and maintain the facilities. Typically, multiple operators and maintenance technicians are spread out across the plant on any given shift, communicating with each other via two-way radios (“walkie-talkies”). The operator is fixed at a console in the control room, and the maintenance technicians are roaming the site attending to equipment maintenance, repair issues and baseloaded profile challenges as they arise.
In recent years, there have been significant advancements in controls for operational flexibility. The challenge is to enable two levels of remote control of the Human Machine Interface (HMI) and other control room computers, further building upon the digital infrastructure. These two levels consist of:
Architecture with Purdue Model