Ingrid for Power Plants

The market's largest database for Power Plant Cycling Operations

16 October 2018

Intertek has introduced an innovative Total Quality Assurance solution, Ingrid, to help plant stakeholders gain valuable insight into power generating asset performance, efficiency, reliability, and cycling operation metrics, as well as asset life estimates and economics.

Ingrid is a web-based database and analytics platform that utilizes the latest in data manipulation technology to provide detailed operation indicators and benchmarks on fossil power generation. Ingrid leverages the data and analytics from our Power Plant Cost of Cycling service, providing a unique platform for up-to-date and reliable data, and helping clients to better understand the nature of their operations, additional capital and maintenance "wear and tear" costs and operating risk. Intertek's industry leading Power Plant Cycling Cost service has been utilized in some of the world's largest renewable integration studies, to characterize plant cycling operations, and understand the impact of flexible operation on power plant operating costs, emissions compliance, and performance risks.

Map of all power plants in the Ingrid Database by fuel category

Ingrid Features & Graphical Reports

• Dynamic tables and interactive plots for visual representation of data and easy review or search
• Intertek's proprietary data analysis regarding plant cycling and performance metrics (starts, load follows, and reliability metrics)
• Cost of power plant cycling, reliability, and asset remaining life estimates in an easy to use and familiar format
• Numerous search capabilities (e.g. plant name, location, and specific criteria)
• Aggregated generation for plants, companies, counties, NERC regions and states or for a specific fuel. Information that provide useful insights to energy stakeholder

Ingrid features and graphical reports

Plant owners and operators want to gain valuable insight into their generating asset's performance, efficiency, reliability, and cycling operation metrics. By assimilating data from the operation of thousands of operating fossil generators that reflect past performance metrics, in particular power plant cycling, impact on plant reliability and emissions, Ingrid allows Intertek experts to analyze operations at highly granular timescales and develop powerful insights.

Ingrid allows customers to quickly gain strategic advantage through the understanding of their relative position in the market and asset life prediction.

To learn more, visit our website or contact us.

The goal of Asset Integrity Management (AIM) is to effectively manage corporate assets in order to gain maximum value, profitability and returns while safeguarding personnel, the community, and the environment.  At Intertek our AIM team delivers trusted and innovative technical solutions that ensure the quality, safety and reliability of our clients' assets.

Dr. Gascón is a data scientist with expertise in evaluating large data sets from fossil and renewable energy power plants. He uses statistical analysis, mathematical modeling and machine learning techniques to generate predictive models to improve plant efficiency. Dr. Gascón earned a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics developing detectors to study nuclear reactions. During a 2-year postdoc at Stanford and 3-year fellowship at Berkeley National Laboratory, he studied "How to improve the functionality of radiation detectors by applying extreme conditions and using novel techniques and materials," with the objective of increasing the sensitivity of these detectors for national defense applications. Dr. Gascón leverages his broad experience, programming skills and quantitative analytical background to solve a wide variety of problems involving large data sets in the power industry. He is the principal architect of Intertek's data analytics platform Ingrid. His current responsibilities include the development of COSTCOM®, a real-time cost analysis tool for power plant operations, WearMulti and OPCONTM, two multipurpose programs used in the nuclear industry. He also developed Windlife, a fully customizable web-application for wind farms featuring anomaly detection and remaining life estimation. Dr. Gascon has also developed programs and algorithms to predict the impact of the variability in power generation of renewable energy on the wear and tear of fossil fuel plants.

Tags: 2018 | Asset Integrity Management | Energy | Environmental | Martin Gascon | Oil and Gas | Renewable Energy