Connected energy solutions at AVEVA World 2023

The Oilholic is delighted to be back in San Francisco for AVEVA World 2023 - the annual client fixture for technology consulting and industrial software company AVEVA. It's also the company's first major event since being taken over by Schneider Electric in January 2023.

A content packed start to the conference, being held at San Francisco's Moscone Center, has seen wide ranging discussions on connected solutions in the industrial software space, cloud-based applications and how the energy industry can turn volatility and challenges over meeting sustainability targets into opportunities. Afterall, the sector is pursuing a deep transformation to become more sustainable as well as ensure that the world's needs are met. Technology provides many, if not all, of the answers.

Kicking off proceedings, Caspar Herzberg, CEO of AVEVA, talked of exploring use cases for a sustainable industrial ecosystem - one that's connected and utilizes the power of big data and a seemingly unlimited world of data analytics. And of course, placing the company's platform agnostic AVEVA Connect product suite at the heart of this connected industrial ecosystem. 

"Those that master this art [of a connected, sustainable industrial ecosystem] will outperform other systems," Herzberg said in his keynote. The AVEVA boss' pitch is a clear and simple one to energy, heavy industrials, mining, metals, companies, and indeed other sectors - tie in process efficiencies, improved throughout and sustainability, take learnings from data using AI solutions, and the results would become evident.

Those results include energy efficiency pathways that are 20% better and would invariably help in lowering carbon emissions. One enabling solution is digital twin technology. Read more about it and this blogger's conversation with AVEVA's Head of Research and Innovation Simon Bennett on Forbes.

There's more to come from AVEVA World 2023 - an event Herzberg himself described on Tuesday as one of the largest gathering of industrial software professionals and specialists in the world. That appears to be around 2,500 attendees and counting.

Away from the event, here is the Oilholic's latest piece for The Motley Fool on BP's share price direction, and how significant the appointment of its next CEO could be. That's all for now folks. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'!

To follow The Oilholic on Twitter click here.

To follow The Oilholic on Forbes click here.

To follow The Oilholic on Rigzone click here.

To email: journalist_gsharma@yahoo.co.uk  

© Gaurav Sharma 2023. Photo: Caspar Herzberg, CEO of AVEVA, speaks at AVEVA World 2023 at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, US on October 24, 2023. © Gaurav Sharma 2023. 

A Peek at ‘Ice Banks’ under 30 Rock

The Oilholic finds himself back in New York, US for the finale of the ABB Formula E 2019 season. But before watching the FIA-backed electric-mobility powered thrill ride, this blogger paid a visit to the Big Apple's iconic 30 Rockefeller Plaza building known to most locals as 30 Rock, rather than its relatively new christening as the Comcast Building.

Most visitors head to the "Top of the Rock", i.e. the building's observation deck to soak in views of the City's amazing urban sprawl and spectacular skyline. But unlike most, yours truly headed to the bottom to get a glimpse of a fascinating endeavour in energy efficiency.

You won't need to be an engineer to work out that the 30 Rock, and by extension the wider Rockefeller Center – a large complex of 19 buildings covering 22 acres between 48th and 51st Streets – consume copious amounts of power, more so in the summer months with air conditioning on full blast. For a city that consumes close to 11,000MW to 15,000 MW of power per day, keeping things in check is a matter of priority starting right with its Skyscrapers.

It is with this objective that the good folks at 30 Rock set about it using ice! The concept is simple yet brilliant in equal measure – a solution to the summer's searing heat by freezing water at night (when power is cheaper, produced efficiently and loads are lighter) and then using it to cool the building as it melts the next day during peak load periods.

Much of that infrastructure is housed below 30 Rock glanced at by the Oilholic, courtesy of ABB, with the electrification and robotics giant inheriting a legacy service and maintenance contract for 30 Rock from General Electric, following the Swiss company's takeover of its American counterpart's industrial solutions unit GEIS in 2018.

Dubbed "IceBank(s)" by their manufacturer Calmac, the ice freezing and melting units now form the centrepiece of innovation at the heart of 30 Rock's legacy power systems dating back to the 1930s. According to ABB's Senior Manager in-charge of the contract James Payne, the system's thermal energy storage premise lessens stress on the power infrastructure since consumption during the critical peak hours (which for 30 Rock would be between 11-1pm and 4pm-5pm), and shifts the demand dynamic to the night-time.

Away from prying eyes, legacy systems intertwined with state-of-the-art digital systems and a maze of pipes, pumps, tanks, wires and fuses get to work day in / day out for a building that has some pretty demanding tenants – not least broadcaster NBC. 

The ICE system has seen constant improvements since 2012 has proved itself to be pretty reliable. As for the sheer numbers, according to a spokesperson, the Rockefeller Center as a whole is served from its 30 Rock hub by a central chilled water plant containing 14,500 tonnes of steam and electric driven chillers.

The water is distributed around the entire building campus through a "main water loop" which travels around the perimeter of the site. Six primary pumps are located in the main plant, four having 6,000 GPM capacity at 125hp and two having 2,000 GPM capacity at 50hp.  Each individual building has pumps which then draw off of the primary loop and send the main plant's chilled water to heat exchangers located within each building.

There are seventeen "primary chilled water riser pumps" which range in size from 1000 GPM at 40hp up to 3500 GPM at 200hp. The secondary side of the heat exchangers have pumps which serve the air handlers and fan coils which serve the tenant spaces, and individual building pumps draw chilled water to heat exchanges located within each building.

If all that sounds a bit heavy, then simply consider this – power costs have come down by as much as 30% on annualised basis using such thermal storage techniques. The concept is not new and has been around for nearly 15 years, but New York is getting seriously serious about it these days.

Beyond the Rockefeller Center, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America towers have all gone down the thermal storage route, with rising take-up in the last five years. ABB, which has been growing its footprint in New York state, says advanced digitisation can work alongside legacy power systems to create an efficient, serviceable power ecosystem incorporating thermal storage, as more and more buildings opt for sustainable solutions and work towards lowering their carbon footprint.

ABB's viewpoint is shared by real estate firm Tishman Speyer, ventilating and cooling systems maker Trane and of course IceBank manufacturer Calmac – all of whom are drivers of thermal storage adoption at 30 Rock. Let's see where the market goes, but the next five years should be interesting. That's all from 30 Rock folks, its time for the Formula E racetrack now! 

To follow The Oilholic on Twitter click here.

To follow The Oilholic on Forbes click here.

To email: gaurav.sharma@oilholicssynonymous.com

© Gaurav Sharma 2019. Photo 1: 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, USA. Photos 2,3,4: 30 Rock Plant control systems incorporating thermal storage © Gaurav Sharma, July 2019. 

Of inequalities, debt, oil & international finance

Rewind the clock back to the morning after the collapse of Lehman Brothers; the Oilholic remembers it vividly. The world's fourth-largest investment bank at the time ran out of options, ideas, saviours and most importantly - working capital - on that fateful morning in September 2008. However, when filing for bankruptcy, it committed one final blunder. The administrators and liquidators - spread as far and as wide as the investment bank's own global operations - failed to coordinate with each other.

Uninstructed, the London administrator froze the bank's assets and panic ensued as investors started pulling out money from all investment banks; even those few with no question marks surrounding them. It was the moment the US sub-prime crisis became a global financial malaise that nearly took the entire system down. 

Since the episode, several books have been written about the when, where, why and how; even what lead to the crisis and the inequity of it all has been dealt with. However, via his book Baroque Tomorrow, Jack Michalowski has conducted a rather novel examination – not just of the crisis alone, but also of our economic health either side of it, the proliferation of international finance and consumer driven innovations.

His claim about our present reality is a bold and controversial one – that virtually every element of the story of the past four decades points to a structural decline, one that's rooted, as in all other historical declines, in massively growing populations faced with declining innovation and lack of new energy converters or new cheap energy sources.

Drawing interesting parallels with what happened in Renaissance and Baroque Europe, Michalowski opines that the so-called Third Wave visions of mass affluence and broad technological progress hailed by Alvin Toffler and other futurists were just a fantasy.

In his book of just under 360 pages, split into four parts, Michalowski writes that in a world where political programmes last only until the next election; progress is flat or worse still non-existent. That all innovations are driven by returns on the money invested, and the major life-changing ones that propelled us onwards and upwards from the Industrial Revolution are already with us. What has followed in their wake are fads delivered to a consumer-led debt-laden world with rising levels of energy consumption. 

According to Michalowski, history proves that we were only rescued from decline and propelled along a new path by the invention of new energy sources and new energy converters – things like agriculture, sailships, windmills, iron ploughs, combustion engines, trains, cars and airplanes, or nuclear reactors – and never by invention of new information processing technologies. IT advances, he argues, usually come late in the historical cycle.

On reading this book, many would remark that the author is over-simplifying the complex issues of innovation, progress and prosperity (or the lack of). Others would say he is bang on. That's the beauty of this work – it makes you think. For this blogger – it was a case of 50:50. There are parts of the book the Oilholic profoundly disagrees with, yet there are passages after passages, especially the ones on proliferation of international finance centres, debt, hydrocarbon usage and pricing, that one cannot but nod in agreement with. 

Perhaps we are wiser in wake of the financial crisis and have turned a corner. That may well be so. But here's a tester – drive away from the glitzy Las Vegas Strip to other parts of the city where you’ll still see streets with plenty of foreclosed homes. Or perhaps, you care to visit the suburbs of Spanish cities littered with incomplete apartment blocks where developers have run out of money and demand is near-dead. Or simply check the inflation stats where you are? And so on.

In which case, is Michalowski wrong in assuming that there is a "de-education and de-skilling of the rapidly pauperizing middle class and dramatic polarization of the society between rich and poor. Very high levels of inequality are proven by history to be absolutely destructive. As malaise sets in, they become a major contributor to decline."

Some of the author's thoughts are hard to take; some of the dark quips – especially one describing Dubai as a Disneyland for grown-ups – make one smirk. None of his arguments are plain vanilla, but they make you turn page after page either in agreement or disagreement. You'll keep going because the book itself is very engaging; even more so in a climate of persistent inflation and stagnant real incomes. 

Michalowski says that unless current trends change dramatically, the next forty years will bring more of the same. If so, we are looking at an entire century of decline in incomes and living standards or a "true Baroque era." Now, whether one buys that or not, the way the author has used history to make a statement on the macroeconomics of our time is simply splendid and a must read.

The Oilholic is happy to recommend it to peers in the world of energy analysis, economists and social sciences students. Even the enthusiasts of digital media might find it well worth their while to pick this book off the bookshelves or download it on their latest gizmo.

To follow The Oilholic on Twitter click here.

To email: gaurav.sharma@oilholicssynonymous.com

© Gaurav Sharma 2013. Photo: Front Cover – Baroque Tomorrow © Xlibris / Jack Michalowski