Power Generation & Distribution

Energy issues are becoming more important as our natural energy resources gradually deplete. Many enterprises, manufacturers, stores, and even governments are trying their best to optimize energy management to reduce costs. Advantech’s PAC solution combines powerful integration capabilities with robust hardware to provide solutions for any energy management system. This solution is suitable to save operation costs for chain stores and enterprises of all kinds.

To ensure that customers’ equipment isn’t damaged, electricity suppliers need to ensure that the voltages delivered to customers are at an even level. They achieve this by the continual monitoring of the supply equipment.

Traditional electricity grids are pretty ‘dumb’, they continuously send out specific amounts of electricity until some engineers tweak that amount to meet the needs of the users. Smart grids, on the other hand are designed to monitor electrical supply and usage at any time, so they can adjust the creation and consumption of power, manage storage of surplus electricity, and so save energy, reduce waste and improve reliability of the power supply. If some of these functions are still in the future, researchers are already building smart grids in the laboratories.

Swansea Metropolitan University (SMU) based in South Wales (UK), has been a major centre for the delivery of vocational higher education since 1853. The University employs more than 500 staff and teaches more than 6,000 students. The Welsh Assembly (Welsh government) sets energy targets for large organizations to achieve and by doing so they receive some form of rebates or benefits. So recently the university commissioned a new energy saving system which combined a Target and Monitoring (T&M) and a Building Management System (BMS) which needed to be custom built to specific requirements. This was implemented by Highland Services, as well as the University M&E maintenance company with SCADA software

As many energy companies seek to reduce their footprint on the environment, more efficient power and energy generation is becoming a critical issue. In the power generation and distribution market, maintenance-free power backup systems and IEC 61850-based power transmission & distribution systems improve energy generation and distribution efficiency. Power substations are subsidiaries of electricity generation systems where voltage is transformed from high to low or reversed using transformers. Nowadays, multiple protocols, including many proprietary protocols with custom communication links exist for substation automation and interoperation with devices from different vendors would be a huge advantage to users of substation automation devices.

As many energy companies seek to reduce their footprint on the environment, more efficient power and energy generation is becoming a critical issue. In the power generation and distribution market, maintenance-free power backup systems and IEC 61850-based power transmission & distribution systems improve energy generation and distribution efficiency. Power substations are subsidiaries of electricity generation systems where voltage is transformed from high to low or reversed using transformers. Nowadays, multiple protocols, including many proprietary protocols with custom communication links exist for substation automation and interoperation with devices from different vendors would be a huge advantage to users of substation automation devices.

China's national wind power capacity is expected to reach 30 million W by 2015. By conservative estimation, China's wind power capacity will be up to 80 million W by 2020. The dramatic increase in the number of wind power plants thereby requires a great number of wind farm information management systems and remote wind turbine monitoring systems. Since these systems are used in harsh environments, they need the support of managed industrial Ethernet switches with wide temperature ranges. Recently, a large manufacturer of wind power turbines purchased Advantech's EKI series as the main network switches for its management system.

The Sun is a huge source of abundant power, sending nearly 10,550 EJ of energy to the Earth every day. This is more energy in one hour than all the combined cities of the world use in one year. To try and harness this magnificent power, many countries have been investing in solar technologies for over 30 years. Today’s solar thermoelectric systems include reflectors, mirrors, heat insulating absorbers and advanced motion control technology. Advantech’s own Industrial Wireless Ethernet products are a perfect fit for many such applications due to their great performance, reliability and ruggedness.

Over the last 10 years, the rapid expansion of Beijing’s underground system has helped to modernize the city. However, the sprouting metro lines would be paralyzed if the supply of electrical power was not stable.