Environment & Energy | Monday 30 October, 2017 12:27 pm |

GE Power (NYSE: GE) signed a deal with the First National Operations and Maintenance Company (NOMAC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power, to implement its APM solution, powered by Predix at 26 thermal, wind and solar power generation and water desalination sites. The facilities are located across Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Morocco, Jordan, Turkey, South Africa, Bulgaria and Vietnam. Together, they generate more than 22,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity and over 2.5 million cubic meters of water per day. NOMAC provides operations and maintenance services at these facilities and APM will help them reduce unscheduled downtime and maintenance duration, as well as to increase operational efficiency and reliability at the plants.

 

The agreement was signed by Julio Torre Gutierrez, President & CEO of NOMAC and Bhanu Shekhar, Chief Digital Officer of GE Power in the Middle East & Africa, in the presence of other senior executives from both companies at GE Digital’s 6th Annual Minds+Machines Conference held in San Francisco on October 25 and 26.

 

Julio Torre Gutierrez of NOMAC said, “With our growing geographic footprint, it is vital that our technological capabilities match our expanded reach. GE’s APM solution is an excellent fit for our requirements, enabling us to serve our customers and the communities they power better by enhancing the availability of uninterrupted, reliable and more affordable electricity.”

 

APM will help NOMAC to collect, analyze and visualize the data that is crucial to asset health at its monitoring centers in Dubai & Jeddah and prioritize work by understanding the true status of an asset, as well as determining which assets are most critical to the overall health of operations. It will enable NOMAC to predict equipment and process issues with greater accuracy before they occur and assure the mechanical integrity of assets. GE’s APM solution is powered by Predix, which is GE’s application development platform for the Industrial Internet, purpose-built to meet the scale, complexity, speed and security requirements of industry.

 

Bhanu Shekhar of GE said, “GE’s agreement with NOMAC underscores both the significant focus on driving better efficiency and reliability across the power generation industry, as well as the tangible cost benefits that digital technologies bring to the sector globally. By embracing the digital transformation today, leaders such as NOMAC are enabling the future success and competitiveness of their organizations.”

 

 

Today, the APM solution has helped customers globally improve the reliability of power generating machines, reducing unplanned downtime up to 5 percent, reducing false positive alerts up to 75 percent and reducing operations and maintenance costs up to 25 percent. The solution works across all assets for thermal, wind, solar and desalination plants, as well as for technologies manufactured by various original equipment manufacturers (GE and non-GE).

 

GE has over eight decades of partnership in the Kingdom. It has over a 4,000-strong workforce, including Baker Hughes, a GE company, with 50 percent of its talent in highly skilled engineering and technology roles. GE also aims to double leadership, technical and engineering training across sectors to over 10,000 Saudi professionals through local and global programs. A key partner in the Kingdom’s power sector, GE has more than 500 gas turbines installed in Saudi Arabia, which provide over 50 percent of the country's electricity.