GE Power Conversion’s Energy Management System (EMS) is an advanced automation system designed to manage the electrical power availability of energy-critical industrial plants and maritime vessels by enabling a permanent load balancing between the energy produced and the energy consumed, ensuring the global energy efficiency of the plant.

With different facilities having different energy needs, sources, networks and configurations, they benefit from dedicated, specific electrical energy management. It is especially true for islanded facilities with few embedded power generation units, or for interconnected facilities with low grid reliability, where the blackout risks are critical to operations.

The increasing addition of renewable energy sources into the energy mix is bringing additional instability risks (renewables energy supplies can be more intermittent and lack inertia). To tackle these challenges, GE Power Conversion’s EMS is evolving from a stand-alone power availability system into a combined and integrated power electronics and automation solution to mitigate the risks of electrical stability and power quality issues.

Benefits

• Helps ensure operational delivery and increase safety by significantly reducing or even eliminating blackout risks
• Improves the plant’s global energy efficiency by allowing a complete and consistent integration of power generation system, electrical distribution network and plant’s process equipment while limiting the GHG emissions
• Contributes to productivity improvement thanks to its embedded analytics and digital tools, like Asset Performance Management (APM) or simulation software.

Features

• Architecture based on GE’s core variable frequency drives control structure:Real time controllers
• Hot standby redundancy
• Ability to control multi-providers’ devices
• Focus on cyber security and compliance with cyber security standards (IEC 62443)
• Modular and scalable: Can be installed on islanded facilities as well as in a micro-grid ecosystem
• Scalable to adapt to network or load expansion or process evolution in projects, ensuring sustainability of initial investment.