September-October 2017 NPJ

Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2017 NuclearPlantJournal.com 35 (Continued on page 36) speeding up the capability to make those decisions coupled with the initial basis to justify them. 2. Is there any dialogue with the US NRC on how plant life extension may be optimized and made a lot more efficient? Availability of data and simplifying how that data can be used would certainly assist some sites with the assembly of the various reports, calculations and historical operating conditions needed to obtain life extension approval from the NRC, however GE Hitachi and GE Digital are not specifically talking to the NRC on this topic. The life extension process for achieving up to 60 years is well established already. Use of the Predix platform in the Nuclear Industry will solely center around decision-support, providing information for a human user to then assess and decide what they’re going to do with the output. As we start deploying the Predix platform across more nuclear power generation sites we are starting to collect the data that could certainly support and simplify the effort associated with the 80- year life extension processes. 3. What’s the relationship among big data, Predix and internet of things? The consumer internet is really the starting point for big data philosophies and the Internet of Things. It is typically easier for people to make the connection with the volume of consumer data that is being created every day. For example, how major suppliers of consumer goods decide where to place their warehouses and distribution centers, is more based on the buying habits of the region than based on the cost of the property. These organizations utilize advanced and highly specific algorithms that look at patterns related to consumer information. It’s too hard for the human brain to see these patterns in a common spreadsheet. To me, this is what big data is really about, the ability for computers to connect the vast amounts of data being created on a daily basis, which then allows insights and patterns to be discovered much easier and faster than a human could achieve on their own. On the Internet of Things, this is really where industrial applications start to over shadow the consumer internet and will also drive massive growth in both the volume and frequency of data being created in those big data environments. The consumer internet connects a person to a supplier, whether it be for information, access to a tool, or for products to purchase. The consumer internet also monitors pieces of data that are typically not changing every millisecond, for the most part. Individual consumers today likely have a few devices to access the consumer internet, from computers, to phones, to watches to athletic equipment for example. When you start applying these concepts today to the industrial application, now each piece or sub-piece of machinery, each sensor even, plus every person working at an organization can begin to interact for industrial efficiency and output purposes; to obtain information, access a tool, or initiate an algorithm in a more informed and productive manner. The number of industrial assets, sensors and people coupled with the number of applications they could access vastly overshadows consumer internet, especially when you consider that most of this data is changing every millisecond. So as the internet of things gets connected, new opportunities for improvement previously only dreamed about become real possibilities, assuming we have the connectivity and computing capability that can handle this new data volume. This is where the Predix platform enters the equation. Predix is the platform for the industrial internet of things (IIOT). Designed to handle the vastly larger and higher frequency data sets, and built to accommodate the open creative environment that we live in today. With Predix, GE has created a new category of business applications for IIOT solutions. By connecting the Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) platforms together with industrial analytics, then coupled with over 120 years of GE’s engineering and industrial design capabilities, Predix enables this new level of industrial efficiency and optimization to occur.