Digital Twin technologies have substantial unrealized potential for predicting how physical entities can and should behave.
The past few years have seen the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) evolve from a theoretical way for operations and plants to become more efficient to a digital reality in the way utilities operate on a day-to-day basis. From equipment monitoring to smart meter applications – and everything in between – sensors, the data they produce, and the smart applications these connected systems enable, have brought numerous benefits to utilities.
These organizations are now looking at how to achieve additional advantages from their sensor-driven operations through digital twins. A virtual copy of a physical building, combining a 3D model of a facility with the dynamic data needed to show visualizations and analysis, a digital twin provides a decision support tool that leverages real-world data to produce predictions or simulations that enable improved decision-making.
For years, digital twins have been ranked among the top technology trends and many companies – including FuseForward – are actively involved in pilot projects across several use cases.
A Bridge Between the Physical and Digital World
Today’s digital twins provide a vital link between the physical and virtual worlds, using existing systems and processes as well as behavioral models to simulate how people will interact with the systems they touch.
The Booming Demand for Digital Twins in the Utility Sector
It wasn’t that long ago that smart meters were the biggest digital change in utilities, but the IIoT now encompasses everything from continuous monitoring of networks to asset visualization and analytics. Digital twins can offer predictive capabilities, using real-time IoT data (and more) to issue predictions of events long before they occur.
For example, digital twins can foresee power grid failure in utility environments by predicting specific factors like the likelihood of fires starting, or gas leaking from individual asset components, or pipes bursting. Digital twins allow utility workers to visualize an asset in the context of the system and the surrounding environment, check its status, and perform analyses and simulations. This enables utilities to better understand the past and current performance of their systems while helping them predict future performance.
Digital twins give utilities actionable insights that help them predict performance and identify failures before they happen, as well as optimizing asset performance and risk-based planning. Enabled by intelligent and connected digital infrastructure, digital twins support planning, design, construction, and operations for smart utilities.
Using Digital Twins for Managing Assets
mode to better visualize the assets inside one of its floors.
Design Phase:
At this first stage, a comprehensive inventory is made of all critical assets going into the facility and organized into an ontology database. The ontology captures the identity and characteristics of individual assets as well as the functional relationships between them. Important decisions are made at this stage concerning what sensors are required to monitor assets and how this data will be collected in a robust, autonomous manner. A digital twin of the proposed facility is created by translating the design blueprints into a 3D model that can be viewed in an interactive computer environment, including virtual representations of all the assets and their functionality. The twin will receive data from the assets and their sensors, centralizing the operational information flow for the facility. This digital twin will be used to simulate the operation, maintenance, and asset lifecycles in a virtual world even before the facility is constructed.
Construction Phase:
During this phase, the digital twin is used to monitor how well the construction is following the facility design as represented in the twin and updated to represent the true state of the facility as it evolves from groundbreaking to completion. The twin will guide aspects of the construction where we can ask “what if” questions about possible methods of installation, order of construction, use of temporary storage space and so on. The digital twin is enhanced with photogrammetry of the real facility and assets as it is being constructed and will include images and information of assets that may be hidden behind walls and equipment once construction is complete. These hidden views will enhance the virtualization in the digital twin.
facility managers with a real-time view of building operations.
Operations Phase:
The digital twin is the command-and-control center for all operations of the facility. Informed by data from assets and sensors across the facility, the digital twin and its on-screen representation will host and display all the information about the state of operation for the facility. With appropriate interactive display technology, human operators have a responsive, intuitive control center to monitor all aspects of the facility and issue necessary commands. Moreover, the digital twin will be used in “simulation mode” to test out possible operational scenarios for the facility in a safe, virtual work before implementation in the real facility.
Maintenance Phase:
With appropriate sensors, assets inform the digital twin about their healthy operation and impending need for maintenance. Electrical transformers and transmission lines will overheat before completely failing; pumps will change their signature vibration patterns before wearing out; valves will slow down before they need to be replaced; when one motor fails it can predict that similar motors with similar workloads are also nearing failure. With sensors to aggregate these signals and AI attached to the digital twin, the system will use machine learning to guide the maintenance cycle and enhance asset performance throughout the facility.
Enabling Better Decision-making
Digital twins are decision support tools. You don’t need to go all the way to the creation of a comprehensive digital twin – by focusing on using data to make better decision making you will be on the way there.
Is there an aspect of your operation that would benefit from improved decision-making? Start small. Begin by structuring data and incorporating the systems and processes required for a digital twin in the future. Once you have done this, you will be ready to launch a pilot project to validate that you are getting a return on your investment.
Contact us to learn more, and get started with your first digital twin pilot project.