"Power plants implementing wireless systems do so for the same reason as the designers of the first telegraph system—cost savings," says Cindy Bloodgood, Honeywell Process Solutions – the author of the white paper.
Utilities look to wireless to add real business value, both in terms of installation costs and optimized operations from increased data availability.
There are countless remote applications in power plants that can benefit from wireless technology. A Nebraska power plant, for example, is using wireless technology to monitor their remote oil tanks.
Wireless application are also able to efficiently monitor water run-off where electricity is not available. Their battery-powered transmitters transmit over long distances back to a powered node, the white paper outlines.
The operator of a power plant in Bulgaria used wireless temperature transmitters to measure steam used for heavy oil burners. "These were entirely new measurements that were not available previously," Bloodgood wrote in the white paper. The wireless applications are replacing a previous wired solution that would have taken two months just to procure, with a wireless solution that took just two days.
Other power plants are considering wireless applications such as:
• Supervisory control and data acquisition
• Emissions monitoring
• Flame sensing with transmitters or even a remote wireless video
• Control applications, such as turbine control, boiler control, or motor control
• Monitoring the health of rotating assets