by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Apr 24, 2022 | Electrical Reliability, The Sustainable Plant
Prior to the 2000s, discussions about electric power and the grid mainly revolved around reliability and availability. Of course, there was some understanding of issues related to early smart-grid communications and cybersecurity. But it wasn’t until the 21st...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Apr 18, 2022 | Electrical Reliability, The Sustainable Plant
It is 2022, and we are discussing electrification of everything, a transition to all-electric vehicles, the integration of new power sources, and a general change from fossil fuels to alternative energy. Somewhere out there is a fleet of power-generation that powers a...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Apr 10, 2022 | The Sustainable Plant, Workforce Issues
We’re now back to face-to-face meetings in Washington, DC. The last in-person meetings with legislators and Federal agencies were in 2020. This year, the focus through Business Leaders United, SMRP, and American Clean Power (ACP), was on the JOBS Act, other...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Mar 20, 2022 | Asset Management, The Sustainable Plant
These days, there is ample hype, not to mention plenty of articles, on digital transformation, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). So much that even those of us in the midst of such discussions tend to get confused. The terms and their...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Feb 27, 2022 | Electrical Reliability, The Sustainable Plant
Electricity: Other than work performed through connected equipment, it’s invisible and rarely considered until a blackout or other dramatic event occurs. From a reliability perspective, more effort is spent on understanding the greasing of a bearing that would...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Feb 19, 2022 | Asset Management, Electrical Reliability, The Sustainable Plant
Take it or leave it, the discussion of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions has been relatively dominant in energy industry circles since the early 1990s. These days, industrial operations look to projects that will reduce energy (which directly impacts the bottom line) and...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Jan 23, 2022 | Beyond RAM, The Sustainable Plant
For the uninitiated, “ESG” is the acronym for Environmental, Social, and Governance performance. Headlines and associated press releases and articles often focus on ESG performance these days. Some seem to represent thinly veiled warnings for businesses...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Jan 15, 2022 | Asset Management, The Sustainable Plant
The success of reliability and maintenance (R&M) programs ebb and flow depending on the flavor of the month. Frequently those programs gain legs because of some catastrophic incident. Or, perhaps, they are used as a way to reduce headcount based on common business...
by Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor | Nov 15, 2021 | Asset Management, The Sustainable Plant
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock during the past few weeks, you probably are aware of the 2021 COP26 Climate Change Convention in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Media sources are still being been bombarded with sound bites coming out of speeches at the event...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Jul 26, 2021 | Electrical Reliability, The Sustainable Plant
In the context of this article, the term “smart device” is defined one that is programmed to be capable of some independent action. We also use terms such as big data, cloud, neural networks, artificial or augmented intelligence (AI), virtual reality,...
