How Energy Organizations Can Address Challenges with Remote Operations Software

Energy generators today face a range of challenges related to daily operations, as well as operating safely during contingencies. For instance, during daily operations, it can be difficult to maintain site or enterprise-level visibility, workforce engagement and flexibility, and ensure security and compliance. Furthermore, continuing safe operations during contingencies could prove to be a real challenge if organizations are not fully equipped to tackle this challenge.

In the past, organizations have tried to address some of these challenges through workarounds, including in-house developed, do-it-yourself (DIY), or point solutions. However, in the majority of cases these solutions fail to address the issues in an efficient and secure manner. Usually, the in-house or DIY approaches utilize Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to enable remote connections. VPN-based approaches not only fall short in offering remote monitoring and control capabilities, but they also increase security and compliance risks associated with such remote enablement, thereby inviting more serious problems than they actually solve for! Point solutions, on the other hand, offer only a limited set of remote operations capabilities and lack the ability to scale and support the needs of a large enterprise.

The answer to such remote enablement challenges lies in leveraging enterprise-focused remote operations solutions, which are flexible and scalable per the needs of an enterprise and offer comprehensive remote enablement and security capabilities. Let’s look at some of the most common challenges faced by energy generators and how enterprise-focused remote operations solutions help address them.

Energy generators strive to remain ready to tackle any contingencies that could disrupt operations and/or negatively impact the business in other ways. Many of these types of urgent or emergent situations, for example COVID-19 or adverse weather events, require minimizing on-site staff to ensure their safety. With minimal staff present on-site in these situations, plant sites need a secure mechanism that allows their staff (including permanent, contractual, and third parties) to support operations from remote locations. A remote operations solution perfectly serves this need by enabling only authorized personnel to connect securely from any location and support normal operations.

New generation demands require energy generators to be more flexible and responsive to constantly changing situations. More flexibility and responsiveness require better visibility of operations across sites, which in turn improves decision-making. However, this visibility is difficult to achieve without a centralized system to capture, integrate, process, and present information on a single pane of glass. Enterprise-level remote operations solutions address this challenge through systems called Command Centers.

A Command Center is a single system to aggregate, visualize, analyze, and access data in context across the enterprise systems. Thus, it enables centralized operations staff to monitor, augment or manage control room and maintenance operations across multiple plant sites.

Traditionally, control room functions have been tethered to in-plant locations and systems. However, the rise in remote work owing to changing work practices, COVID-19, technological enablement, and other factors have broken free from these restrictions and made remote operation centers a reality. Organizations that are not leveraging such technologies are missing out on all the great benefits they could unlock for them including driving better employee engagement, productivity and safety as well as reducing operating costs. For instance, remote operations solutions can:

• Provide employees the flexibility to work and collaborate from any location, driving better work-life balance and job satisfaction.
• Boost mobility, collaboration, productivity, and safety of onsite maintenance and operations staff.
• Reduce travel-related expenses, time losses, and emissions.

Leveraging remote experts/teams to support plant operations could prove valuable in situations including:

• Non-availability of the needed staff (expert or individual) at a local site.
• Leveraging remote experts on an ad-hoc basis for troubleshooting or maintenance activities.
• Using remote staff on a regular/contractual basis to actively monitor, manage, or augment plant operations due to cost, expertise, efficiency, or other considerations.

However, without having a solid system for remote enablement in place, it’s not possible to leverage remote staff in these roles. Further, as plants’ critical monitoring and control functions may be accessed from remote locations (by organization’s employees or contracted staff), it’s strongly recommended to have a remote operations solution with robust cybersecurity features.

While we understand that enabling remote access and control is greatly beneficial, as highlighted above, doing it in a highly secure and compliant manner is even more important, especially in a regulated power generation industry. Per a McKinsey article about cybersecurity in operational technology (OT), of 64 OT cyberattacks publicly reported in 2021 (up 140% vs. 2020), approximately 35% had physical consequences, and the estimated damages were $140 million per incident.

Most workarounds or do-it-yourself (DIY) approaches that energy generators continue to try seriously fall short from a security and compliance perspective and might invite cyberthreats, penalties and losses.

On the other hand, enterprise-level remote operations solutions that are based on zero-trust architecture feature robust cybersecurity capabilities and practices (such as multi-factor authentication, protocol isolation, granular controls, and forensics) to thwart cyberattacks. They also ensure compliance with industry standards like NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation), ISA (International Society of Automation), and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

Besides helping with the above challenges, Remote Operations software are among the top digital tools (at the second spot, just after Predictive Analytics software) being pursued by organizations to assist them in their Energy Transition, per the  2023 Digital Energy Report conducted by Reuters and GE.

GE Remote Operations solution is a scalable, enterprise solution with next-generation security features that offers users secure, remote access to essential on-site monitoring and control functions. It empowers the workforce with location flexibility, productivity, and site-to-enterprise level visibility and control, all of which lead to safe, efficient, and reliable operations. Available in two packages (Basic and Advanced), Remote Operations accommodates needs from urgent continuity to fault-tolerant fleet-wide operations centers.