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Going green can bring clear business benefits

Venugopal Pillai ,  Monday, July 25, 2011, 11:55 Hrs  [IST]

Mark Gallant.jpgMark Gallant, Director, Industry MarketPower Industry, Aspen Tech

Aspen Tech is a leading supplier of software that optimizes process manufacturing for energy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering and construction, oil & gas and other industries that manufacture and produce products from a chemical process. In an exclusive interaction with Electrical Monitor, Mark Gallant talks about how Aspen Tech can help India improve efficiency of its power plants and significantly reduce carbon footprint. Gallant feels that India's heavy reliance on coal-fired power units must be weighed against cleaner options. An interview by Venugopal Pillai.

Please tell us in some detail on how AspenTech can help in bringing about efficiency in the operations of power plants. Also tell us about the positive impact of this efficiency on reduction in GHG emissions.
Increased energy efficiency is a strong movement, that I see almost universally as I travel around the globe. Right from initial plant designs, energy optimization is now part of global best-practices in engineering. Every solution within AspenTech's suite supports that goal. Today's newest plants operate at an efficiency level way above what was previously attainable. With existing assets, today's technology offers optimization solutions, which ot available when many process and power plants were originally designed. Adding optimization solutions to existing units not only drives immediate efficiency benefits, but is typically installed with minimal to no interruptions, without the need to wait for a shutdown. Every percentage improvement in efficiency reduces fuel consumption.

 Every reduction in fuel consumed results in a direct drop in GHG and other emissions. Some of our customers that operate very large captive power plants for their industrial complexes, have reported improvements of 3-7 per cent and more in energy cost reductions. Merchant units, while they typically don't have the same degrees of freedom, can still achieve very significant benefits. Those companies that seize these opportunities certainly increase their competitiveness, but also insure sustainability.

India is set to annually add 15,000 mw of new power generation capacity that would predominantly come from coal-fired power plants that are normally considered "non-green". In this context, how do you see AspenTech's role in helping coal-based power plants to mitigate their carbon footprint?
AspenTech plays a key role in three key areas to mitigate the carbon footprint of coal-fired power plants-Optimum Design; Operations and Control; and Fleet Management and Optimization.

Optimum Design: Nearly every top Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) company uses AspenTech's Engineering suite to design the most advanced power plants, from coal gasification to carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) systems. Many owner / operators are acquiring these tools to further provide their engineering teams with the same advanced technologies.

Operations and Control: AspenTech's real-time data historian, InfoPlus.21 is one of the leading data historians for monitoring power plants, as well as other process plants around the globe from refineries and chemical plants, to steel mills and power plants. It collects millions of pieces of information in real-time, that engineers and operators can use for a host of purposes from condition and output monitoring, centralized control and dispatch, advance equipment trouble shooting, to predictive maintenance and event diagnosis. Centralized fleet monitoring centres offer fleet operators a way to quickly capture and disseminate best practices, quickly resolve disturbances and events, all reducing emissions. Additionally, significant benefits can be obtained with Advanced Process Control (APC).

APC is a technology that is simply a 'must have' in many industries today. For example, no one would build a chemical plant or refinery without it today. While this technology is proven and certainly considered mature, in the power industry it is an emerging trend. We first observed that industrial power (captive power) plants first adopted this technology well over 10 years ago, but merchant power plants did not have the complexities they do today, so did not previously adopt it. With today's advanced coal-fired power plants and all their emissions systems, they are looking a lot more like a chemical plant. APC has further advantages of providing a plant 'auto-pilot' often dramatically reducing operator set point changes, as it handles disturbance automatically, long before any trip condition can manifest. For all these reasons, at the recent PowerGen India conference in Delhi, we observed extremely high interest in APC optimization solutions for both new plants, and of course existing units.

Fleet Management and Optimization: Today's power generation fleets are simply getting much more complex. Not just in the variety of generating types, but also in their management and optimization. Wind and solar, which are renewable energy sources, while highly desirable, are often non-dispatched and intermittent in nature. The resulting grid intermittency is just one additional complexity to deal with. As the fleet in India expands, with different constraints like startup and cycling, fuel costs and now emissions regulations and permit constraints - fleet optimization is at a level of complexity never seen before. With the exponentially increase in the number of variables to consider, traditional optimization techniques deliver sub-optimal results, limited simulation and 'what-if' modeling. Starting up a unit too early will result in wasted fuel and generate more emissions, too late and you not only lose revenue, but could drive a negative reserve and penalties. AspenTech's Power industry customers use our advanced optimization solutions to optimize fleets of over 230 units, generating 45,000Mw of power. In summary, the greater the complexity, the more likely you are running below optimal performance. Those that can seize the opportunities will be the ones to drive the greatest returns and reduce their emissions in the process.

Untitled - 17.jpgDo you think AspenTech can reach out to existing governmentowned power stations and help them improve their efficiency?
AspenTech's partner Helium Consulting is now working with several government-owned power stations on their efficiencies. As you noted, many of these units are quite mature and today's technology and solutions just did not exist when those units were constructed. Adding today's optimization technology to those plants, assuming they have or acquire some basic digital instrumentation and control, can be accomplished with most often no or little interruption in service, providing immediate and very tangible benefits. These older plants are also now operating outside of their initial design envelopes, given today's grid demands and complexities. Adding today's advanced optimization solutions typically will add a new level of flexibility, reliability and performance previously unattainable to these mature units, often also extending the service life of the unit.

Apart from power, which are the other process-based industries that AspenTech caters to? In India, which of these would significantly drive AspenTech's business?
AspenTech has just celebrated 30 years as a leading supplier of software that optimizes process manufacturing-for energy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering and construction, power & utilities, metals, mining and minerals, food and beverage and other industries that manufacture and produce products from a chemical process. With integrated aspenONE solutions, process manufacturers can implement best practices for optimizing their engineering, manufacturing and supply chain operations. As a result, AspenTech customers are better able to increase capacity, improve margins, reduce costs and become more energy efficient. Our growth in these industries is closely matched to the industries growth and expansions.

Do you think owners of process-based industries are proactive to adopt solutions to help make their manufacturing process more efficient and less polluting?
Energy management and efficiency is not just a topic we hear in India, but a global one throughout our customer base. Our customers have reported not just sustainable and public relations benefits from 'going green,' but clear financial and business benefits. For example, reducing energy intensity for an industrial process plant saves direct energy costs and reduces GHG, but may allow the process plant to continue operating when energy supply is extremely tight instead of having to shut down during a period of peak power demand on the grid. We see this in some areas of Japan today after their disaster, and this has been the case in some regions of India for some time. Supported by political mandates and/or subsidies, the value proposition for 'green' power generation is also changing. Dirtier plants are being replaced by newer, highly efficient, clean plants. Other plants are receiving substantial retrofits, based on these new economics.

 In a general sense, will it be the private sector or the public sector that would dominate AspenTech's business in India?
AspenTech has been in India for many years supporting both the private and public sectors. Our solutions offer significant benefits for either segment, acknowledging that the drivers and motivations are different between them. For-profit companies in general tend to be earlier adopters of new technology solutions, like APC or energy management for instance. In the public sector, public funded initiatives offer incentives and funding to deploy innovative and emerging solutions that may not otherwise be adapted without that support.

Apart from India, which other emerging economies do you cater to? How do you see the demand for your services in India vis-àvis the others?
AspenTech is a global company with offices in many countries around the world. While we have had offices in many emerging regions for many years, we continue to expand our teams in these areas to match the increased demand. Those areas include India, the Middle East, Latin and South America and in Russia for instance. While some of the demands and interest in technology solutions are similar, each region has its unique and individual support requirements. This is based on it level of maturity of the region's various industries, its natural resource base, growth rates and culture for instance.

India recently unveiled its target of attaining 20,000 mw of nuclear power capacity by 2020. In the wake of the unfortunate natural disaster in Japan and its deterring impact on the country's atomic power stations, how do you see the future for nuke plants in general, and in India, in particular?
The ramifications of the tragedy in Japan and resulting nuclear disaster there continue to unfold every week. The impact of which is being felt around the globe and is certainly a top topic of discussion at many of the power conferences I've attended in the last couple of months. The fact remains that nuclear power has been and will continue to be a part of our global power generation fleet. Even if desired, replacing that generation capacity will take time. That said it is clear that the tragedy in Japan has certainly changed the risk/benefit/cost equation for nuclear plants. This has resulted in new nuclear plant projects around the globe being cancelled; we see it in the news regularly. Many of those projects were marginally viable before the current crisis, and with today's risk/benefit equation, they just no longer were financially viable. Replacing that capacity with other sources will take time. Because most nuclear plants are considered as 'base-load' units, many generation companies have turned back to large coal or thermal units. Many of our customers have reported a renewed interest in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects. While this can be a costly process, over time it will come down and it is one solution that does offer a cleaner solution for all fossil fuel generation sources.

India's huge appetite and need for additional power generation capacity is different than say in Europe, where the supply and demand are much closer matched. So how Germany addresses its nuclear power plants is going to be very different than how India addresses the same issue. I am a strong advocate that every state, country and region needs to have a balanced portfolio of generation types to insure a predictable and reliable source of energy. An increased variety of generation sources balances a myriad series of risks and insures stability. Each generation type is subject to supply and price variability. India's very high reliance on coal units today needs to be assessed against the nuclear option, as well as against renewable energy sources.

Please discuss your existing business set-up in India, and share with us AspenTech's growth plan for the subcontinent.
As noted, AspenTech is leading supplier of software that optimizes process manufacturing-for energy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering and construction, power & utilities and other industries that manufacture and produce products from a process. Given the depth and breadth of the industries we support, we employ a combination of direct sales and services, as well as an extensive partner network. In India for example, our partner Helium Consulting is an extremely knowledgeable partner with years of experience with our solutions that focuses on the power and utility, metals and mining and consumer products process industries. Their local presence combined with their technical knowledge of our products is hard to surpass. In other industries like oil & gas and chemicals, AspenTech services those industries directly from our local offices in Pune. With India's dramatic growth rates in these industries, we see a matched demand for our solutions. As the industries mature and the business complexities increase, we look forward to offering business solutions to solve them and drive tremendous value for our customers.
 
                 
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