Iris Power is piloting 5 Cloud enabled PDTracII Instruments in North America and Europe to investigate the potential of incorporating this technology in condition monitoring of rotating machines. The pilot versions are using cellular connections to push PDTracII data to a SQL database in the Cloud. A Web based application suitable for computer or mobile phone use, provides data viewing from any location with Internet access. The PDTracII supports both the traditional local interfaces via TCP/IP or USB as well as Cloud connectivity.
Web Based Software Interfaces will provide an Asset Status display with summary condition information including location, motor names, warnings, alerts, partial discharge levels and trending.
The main challenges to overcome are: 1) aligning the plant maintenance cycles that are relatively much larger, with the information technology required in an IT (software and hardware) environment that is often in flux; and 2) the major concern in data security which has led to monitoring systems purposefully being designed to not be capable of data transfer data outside of the plant network.