Electricity and Control October 2021

COMMENT

INDUSTRY 4.0 + IIOT

Reimagining how we use energy I t seems we never really think about energy the way we should. Perhaps we have become too accustomed to a world where energy is simply always available? Indeed, we spent huge effort in ensuring that this was the case. Turbines were refined, generators designed, ac faced off against dc – as cables replaced belts, drives and spinning bars and so on.

seemed so much louder than that against coal technology (as an option). Possibly this was based on little understanding of nuclear reactions, and on the devastating impact these had been shown to be capable of in the 1940s. And the continuing worry about safety considerations, and the cost. (Some might argue, of course, that nuclear may well have been a cheaper option than some of the coal-powered plants we are seeing going up on the horizon – but that’s with hindsight.) Nonetheless, it seems that burning coal has without doubt been far worse for the planet. This begs the question, of course, as to whether we can reimagine how we use energy; reimagine what we do with it; and reimagine when we can expect to have access to it. Again, cynics may well say that, in South Africa, we have been pondering these issues for the past decade. Could we imagine a world where huge consumers of energy that need it 24/7 are all co-located with sources of energy (such as hydro) that can be pretty much relied on – or at least, where we have some weeks’ notice of an impending disaster? Could we imagine having to use the sun to heat spaces and (possibly) to run ‘general’ plants and the like? No sun, no energy – go home and return when we have the energy back? Storage is clearly getting cheaper, but it is still very expensive in the context of a large plant. Could we imagine a world where we use energy differently? Certainly it may sound impossible to us now – but is that not because we are conditioned by the reality we have created, and that we must now repair?

energy + information in industry

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Electricity, by all accounts, presented a vast improvement on the purely mechanical means of producing power that it replaced. And with electric energy came the opportunity to burn fossil fuels, make steam, run turbines – and basically light up the world. All was good. It turned out that power plants like to run all the time, and operations were generally more efficient when running at or close to full load. Coal was in use everywhere. After all, it had powered the steam age rather well (before diesel became more fashionable, that is). However, what this created was an economic reliance on electrical power that was available 24/7. Smelters could run all the time to feed the burgeoning and growing economies of the world. These technologies provided the critical base load that the economies needed. But the burning of fossil fuels has slowly but surely been shown to have a starkly negative impact on our environment – and the planet we call home. Carbon is released into the atmosphere, as are particulates, and then there are some pretty nasty invisible components too. I recall so vividly seeing the comparison of a smokestack fitted with bag filters close to one that had no such filters. There was such an impressive difference: smoke from one, nothing from the other. The wise cynic next to me said, “The really bad stuff you simply can’t see…” And that is true. Little effort was put into cleaner options, like nuclear power. In fact, the environmental opposition to nuclear power

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Electricity + Control OCTOBER 2021

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