How Skyworks improved energy efficiency in manufacturing with ETAP Digital Twin and PSMS

Comprehensive power monitoring, control and energy analysis

• Identify areas where energy costs could be reduced across the entire facility
• Ensure compliance with grid code requirements 
• Implement a method for managing the electrical system that includes low voltage to ensure optimal power quality
• Improve the reliability of their operations

• Produce analytics about energy use to support decision-making for both immediate and future improvements

Skyworks has been an ETAP customer since 2019 with an electrical digital twin of their facility electrical system used for analysis at the medium voltage level. Their existing power system analysis with ETAP had already developed electricity and gas efficiency plans that resulted in 29,173 tons of CO2 reduction over these years. They recognized that they could do even more to improve system efficiency and reliability, and set out to advance their existing monitoring system by including medium and low voltage operations, and implementing predictive simulation to more quickly spot and resolve issues to reduce downtime. 

ETAP Power System Monitoring & Simulation (PSMS) – Real-time power management system to determine the appropriate system response to a variety of changes and disturbances by using electrical and physical parameters, loading and generation levels, network topology, and control logics to locate the source of potential problems and advise on corrective actions to avoid interruptions, including:

• Validate before Operate
• Situational Intelligence
• Predictive Simulation
• Event Playback
• Energy Accounting Analysis

ETAP eSCADA – Electrical network visualization, analysis and real-time data acquisition with customizable HMI viewers and notification systems including alarm, event, trending and tabular views, including:

• State Estimation
• Manufacturer-independent Data Acquisition Interface
• Modular System Architecture

ETAP Power Simulator – To create and customize a single-line diagram representing the electrical digital twin of the power system, including both medium and low voltage equipment, for use with load flow analysis in predictive simulation and real-time power monitoring.

• A comprehensive power management system with open architecture that can integrate with existing building management system and manufacturer equipment
• Predictive simulation to rapidly spot potential issues in system behavior in response to operator actions and events, using real-time and archived data
• Detailed energy usage analysis and cost allocation to track energy optimization objectives
• Power monitoring to validate compliance with energy code requirements
• High-quality local technical support
• A scalable energy management solution that supports future plant expansions, which can be easily enhanced with additional monitoring and analysis tools

One of the primary features that Skyworks required for this project was the ability to analyze potential scenarios by using ETAP Validate before Operate in order to reduce the probability of operator error during operation and maintenance activities. When an operator needs to perform changes in the operation and maintenance, such as breaker operations, motor starts, generator operations, loads transfers or more, they can simulate and validate the response of the electrical network and understand risks to avoid unforeseen conditions such as faults with voltage, frequency, protection system operations and power quality issues. 

ETAP provided a comprehensive power monitoring, simulation and analysis solution of the electrical systems in a single environment, with full control over modeling design, simulation to operational maintenance. Integration with their existing management system was essential for Skyworks, whose primary objective was to increase the energy efficiency of the operation through operating data insights, integrated analytics and access to technical data that includes their entire electrical assets.

An ETAP real time server was introduced to manage and communicate with their existing metering and protection equipment using Modbus communication protocols, and to assist with event analysis, system trending and reporting a historian server was added that will archive real time and event historical data.

Operators were then able to use ETAP eSCADA templates and dashboards to customize their HMIs. In addition to the standard alarms provided in other SCADA systems, the ETAP system provides continuous electrical system analysis on the entire network, including non-monitored components, digitally. This increased the visibility of their entire electrical system, providing greater reliability and situational awareness of their operations. The power management system generates analytical alarms for every component in the network without any programming or extra configuration. ETAP eSCADA provides monitoring of metering and protection equipment for various manufacturer equipment. This result is a model-driven electrical SCADA with real time visualization through an intelligent graphical user interface with web-based dashboards and one-line diagram monitoring. As well, user-definable reporting for energy efficiency monitoring and KPI management were also defined and implemented.

 

Improved power management and control over energy costs

• Ensured reliability of the electrical system for the manufacturing facility
• Increased energy efficiency of the entire electrical operation
• Faster decision-making on system requirements and improvements
• Easier and more accurate regulatory compliance assessment
• Cost-saving integration with existing metering and protection equipment