PowerStream

IndustryTransmission and Distribution

Business Value• Asset Health and Uptime • Data Democratization• Process Optimization • Quality Improvement• Real-time KPI Dashboards

PI System™ Components• PI Server™

• Data Archive• Event Frames• Asset Framework (AF)• Notifications

• PI Vision™1

• PI DataLink™• PI ProcessBook™• PI WebParts™• PI Integrator for Esri® ArcGIS®

PARTNERS

SUMMARYPowerStream's Prioritized CBM Model Improves Equipment Availability and Operational Costs

PowerStream, the second largest municipally owned distribution company in Ontario, Canada, has been leveraging the PI System since 2012 to improve the operation and management of its Operations division. Starting its use of the PI System with 5,000 tags as part of its maintenance management system integration, PowerStream now employs over 30,000 tags in what the organization calls a "prioritized condition-based model" to make valuable information available to all stakeholders and make operational decisions in real time.

"We are a utility that pretty well has about 350,000 customers, but we're merging with three other utilities. We'll be up to a million customers within a couple of months," said Vince Polsini, Manager of PowerStream's Station Sustainment Department. "That also presents opportunities for us to expand our PI System."

Since its implementation, Polsini's team has continued to do just that, vastly developing their Asset Framework, increasing the use of Notifications and developing reports based on PI System data. Creating a PI System infrastructure helped provide critical information to those who need to know when events occur throughout the system while enabling easy communication around key operational data throughout the company via dashboards utilizing PI System tools.

"There's a dramatic increase in how information is available," said Polsini. "We've seen an improvement in our system reliability around stations. Availability of equipment has improved...And we've seen definitely some savings in our operational costs."

Transitioning to a Condition-Based Maintenance ModelPrevious to employing the PI System, PowerStream relied heavily on a time-based maintenance model. Once the PI System became part of the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), Polsini's team "re-engineered" the process, transitioning from a time-based maintenance model to a "prioritized condition-based maintenance model". The team underwent RCM training, analyzed its equipment, integrated a number of systems (starting with its SCADA system). They began to notice value when the new system helped them prioritize and optimize maintenance tasks by leveraging real-time information that was not available before.

"So this is what we are now at PowerStream. We are a risk-based, condition-based maintenance utility," said Polsini. "And that's using a combination of the PI System and the maintenance management system speaking to each other."

PowerStream also used Notifications for real-time updates, so the staff was always aware of the condition or status of a piece of equipment before even getting close to a station. Automatic work orders were also triggered by events in SCADA via the PI System.

The team also expanded its use of dashboards, so that all data became visible in a very customized way. "We've expanded the use of the PI System to really work on

CUSTOMER PRESENTATION BRIEFAs presented at the 2016 Users Conference

Polsini, Vince. Equipment Failure is Not an Option. OSIsoft.com. 06 April 2016. Web. 19 April 2016. <http://www.osisoft.com/Presentations/Equipment-Failure-is-Not-an-Option/>.

CBPSTEN-063016b

CUSTOMER PRESENTATION BRIEF

The old model is wait for the phone call from the controller to go do something. Well now, it's kind of changed the other way. We're telling them we already know that there's a problem.

– Vince PolsiniManager, Station Sustainment Department

dashboarding and providing information to as many people as possible, and catering or tailoring those reports specifically to the users that will be looking at these dashboards," said Polsini. Due to the combination of notifications and reports, stakeholders across various levels of the company, ranging from executives to engineers, could receive instant updates as events occured.

In addition, PowerStream began utilizing PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS for increased asset analytics and failure reporting. "It opens up all kinds of opportunities because we've got a lot of attributes that we can now show on a map," said Polsini. This feature proved its value during an ice storm that occured on March 24, 2016, which affected about 50,000 PowerStream customers. "Notifications and the PI System really helped us quite a bit out in the stations. Everybody knew when assets were on and offline," said Polsini. "We were able to react very quickly and actually go to some of these stations and charge the batteries so that when they were called upon to operate, the stations, the batteries were in a position to work."

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Figure 1: PowerStream integrated its SCADA and CMMS with the PI System to create one source of data, which enabled real-time condition-based maintenance through real-time dashboards and notifications, making data visible across the company.

¹ PI Coresight was renamed to PI Vision in 2017

The PI System as a True CBM EnablerPowerStream manages its equipment health by measuring criticality, health, and risk. By having the visibility to its assets' condition in real time, the team has become more proactive by catching issues early, leading to an improvement in overall equipment reliability. "We are now in a position where we're seeing a lot of things that are about to fail or on their way to a failure," said Polsini.

"There's all kinds of valuable information [in the control room], valuable data that they use to operate the system, but that information is equally valuable for planning, engineering, and even maintenance," explained Polsini. "Still the old model is wait for the phone call from the controller to go do something. Well now, it's kind of changed the other way. We're telling them we already know that there's a problem. We've already started to react to that issue."

With the PI System, PowerStream has seen a decrease in equipment failure and operational costs, now taking equipment out for maintenance when it needs to be taken out based on the data, not on a time-based model. Polsini described the PI System as a true condition-based maintenance enabler, maintenance optimizer, and innovation stimulant. "Once you've got the system and you can see what it can do, you want to do more and you want to show more."