| | MAY 20218CIOReviewIN MY OPINIONIn spring of 2018, JEA reemphasized its efforts to determine the best path forward towards a condition-based asset maintenance program. What emerged from a myriad of viable options was a scalable, sustainable IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) Platform, powered by intelligent edge devices and robust data handling capabilities.Like all utilities, JEA is evolving into new business models as consumer demands and the technology landscape changes at a staggering pace. One of the evolving business models of critical importance is asset management, and maintaining the multi-billion dollar portfolio of assets supporting electric, water, and wastewater service operations at the 8th largest municipal utility in the US. With a vast service area of over 850 square miles, JEA turns to technology ­ some legacy, and some emerging ­ to add efficiency, awareness, and transparency to our asset management processes. The development of JEA's IIoT Platform has been long in the making. In the late 1990s, JEA implemented a centralized enterprise time-series data historian that integrated with various plant SCADA systems to capture and share asset measurement data. This data historian evolved and grew over time, becoming critical to JEA Operations. Data collection was buoyed by the ownership of our own communications infrastructure: our ringed fiber architecture helped to enabled reliable fast Ethernet connectivity, and allowed distributed data collection from various sites into a centralized server. Having this in place enabled JEA to do process control optimization using a combination of AI/NN and ML models ­ use cases included boiler optimization, well field pump optimization, and water operations optimization ­ but this was only the beginning. In conjunction with our technology focused Enterprise Information Management program, company asset management leaders worked to identify those use cases that provided exceptional value to JEA, and that would facilitate a shift from reactive maintenance and equipment failures to more proactive maintenance based asset condition monitoring. Among the factors making this shift possible, the market has provided numerous end point devices for monitoring asset telemetry and performance. Moreover, many of these new devices offer compute capabilities, are inexpensive, and `plug in' to established networks via standard protocols already in use. This allows for an exponential increase in the number deployed sensors, the number of data streams from the sensors, and the volume of data collected. In order to take on a change of this magnitude, we embarked on the following course:1) Identify specific use cases for automated IIoT monitoring, based upon business value and complexity;2) Deploy IIoT solutions based upon a limited array of technologies to support these use cases;3) Continue to augment the IIoT platform with new end points and data streams on a use case-by-use case basis ­ HOW JEA USES IIOT TO ENABLE CONDITION-BASED ASSET MONITORING AT THE GRID EDGEBy Steven Selders, Director, IT Strategy & Solution Development, JEA, Michael Eaton, Manager, Enterprise Information Management, JEA, Rob Raesemann, Principal, Raesemann Enterprises
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