Control Global

1 week ago | controlglobal.com | Joe Weiss

Mike Swearingen and I did a webinar for the IEEE Consultants Network on the Spanish Outage and associated grid issues. The webinar can be found on YouTube. As the final results of the Spanish outage are not finalized, our discussions were based on our experience. The initial discussions were on two questions: Could the Spanish grid collapse happen in the U.S., and was it a renewables problem? The answer to the first question is yes as can be seen from my June 9, 2021, blog.

2 weeks ago | controlglobal.com | Joe Weiss

Control system cyber incidents—particularly those originating from even a single compromised or malfunctioning sensor system—can impact vast portions of the electric grid. Despite decades of lessons and warning signs, meaningful progress in securing power grid control systems remains elusive. This failure stems not from a lack of technology, but from foundational misunderstandings in how we conceptualize control system cybersecurity.

2 weeks ago | controlglobal.com | Jim Montague

No wants to be ordered around, but everyone usually appreciates some friendly advice—especially if it’s presented in a genuinely kind and generous way. Likewise, many of today’s automobiles are sensing, analyzing and alerting drivers about potentially unsafe actions, or even preventively slowing cars down when necessary. “What if we could do the same for plant operations?

2 weeks ago | controlglobal.com | Len Vermillion

There’s no shortage of people who want to crack the code on the future of automation. In today’s industrial and manufacturing sectors, where digital transformation presents an exciting, yet hard-to-define path forward, deciding how to best use automation technology can seem quite daunting. Perhaps, it’s simply a matter of modularity.

4 weeks ago | controlglobal.com | Jonathan Katz

Brazilian oil company Petrobras is like many heavy industrial firms today looking for smaller wins that can add up to big emissions savings over time. The state-owned company launched an IIoT initiative called LeakSpy to understand the causes of flaring, the practice of burning off excess natural gas. To accomplish this, the company decided to monitor gas releases from its pressure safety valves (PSVs) by deploying Emerson’s Rosemount 708 Wireless Acoustic Transmitters.