Electricity + Control May 2019

COMMENT

ON THE COVER

FEATURES: · Analytical instrumentation

· Control systems+ automation · Drives,motors+ switchgear · Energymanagement+ environmental engineering · Sensors, switches+ transducers

The emerging new order in industry

W hat a world we live in! So much that is happening seems like the stuff of a good book – or perhaps even a night- mare! But then one does tend to wake up… possibly screaming mind you … And – this is the world we live in, made that much more exciting by our presence in it! Beneath all the noise, remarkable things continue to happen – like the con- tinued rollout of better and more efficient ways for doing things. I can recall when Eskom first began driving energy efficiency very hard – and that was at a time when it had overcapac- ity. Many folk thought it quite funny that the utility would want to sell less energy. The point made then, of course, was the more efficient we became (and let’s be honest, our industry was not then particularly efficient, thriving as it did on cheap energy … ), the less we would need to plan and build new generation, transmission and distribution capacity. However, until people felt the impact in their pockets, energy efficiency was really not taken very seriously. I suspect the impact has now been felt good and solid – although quite probably as much as a consequence of the load shedding as of the increasing cost of energy. This brings to the fore the importance of understanding efficiency, not only in a technical sense, but also in the sense of how one manages and runs any oper- ation – and how operational processes are monitored, measured, automated and

controlled. Each component of efficiency contributes to the better performance and increased profitability of the organisation. We live in a world that is data rich in many, but not all, industries. In this regard, while there are many issues that need to be considered, what is evident is that the more able we are to gather data and con- vert it into useful information, the more able we are to actually improve pretty much every aspect of our operations. Connectedness and remote capability are key attributes of the emerging new order in industry – allowing safer and smarter decisions and actions to be tak- en. There can be no doubt that the more we understand every moment of the plant operation, the more we can manage it. The question then is: ‘what is your or- ganisation doing in this regard?’

energy + information in industry

ECMAy 2019 cover.indd 1

4/24/2019 9:03:37AM

The Leuze DDLS 500 optical data transceiver, available from Countapulse Controls , offers instantaneous data transmission. (Read more on page 19).

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