Cyclone operation and maintenance robot helps a provincial power company to quickly build an intelligent operation and maintenance platform

With the rapid development of such industries as new energy, smart grid, smart city, Internet of Things, distributed energy, electric vehicles and energy storage device systems, power grid enterprises are seeing a new trend of fast growth, big changes and diverse types in their terminal electricity load. In response to it, China’s State Grid proposed a brand new development strategy for this era to build world-class Internet of Energy enterprises featuring Three Types and Two Internets.

In order to make full use of digital intelligent tools and promote the deep integration of business management and value management, a provincial power company introduced Cyclone operation and maintenance robot to quickly build an intelligent operation and maintenance platform as an entry point toward this new strategy, and prioritize it in its marketing and application endeavors.

In the process of actively promoting the in-depth integration of process automation technologies and actual power businesses, the power company has realized the four core capabilities in the intelligent operation and maintenance platform around the automate operation and maintenance requirements in all phases of the power businesses:

1. All-round data collection capability: Collect the core metrics like logs and basic data at a central location, which employs the intelligent collection resource occupation mechanism with no impacts on the normal operation of the system

2. Professional monitoring and early warning capability: Set alarms intelligently in multiple dimensions in the intelligent operation and maintenance platform, which can not only monitor abnormal data based on baseline analytics, but also locate the abnormal points based on event mining.

3. In-depth process tracking capability: Track key business metrics and quickly quantify automated operation and maintenance ROI based on the process data embedded, then make data-driven operation and maintenance decisions

4. Flexible visualized analysis capability: Allow drag-and-drop, exploratory analysis, and analysis by combining multiple dimensions as will. This powerful data drilling capability helps produce cool effects in the data visualization

What is Cyclone Operation and Maintenance Robot?

At the core of Cyclone operation and maintenance robot is simulating human workers’ repetitive, low-value, fixed process operations that do not need any human decision-making through automation and intelligent technologies. It features non-disruption, visualization and zero-code, to achieve short turnaround, fast result and low cost. It can automate the operational processes in business scenarios in a quick and efficient way, and realize automatic human-machine interactions in all phases of the businesses, thus greatly enhancing the automation level in the businesses. It brings the following benefits:

• Automated operation and maintenance, simplifying manual operations and improving the efficiency of executing complicated operations

• 7*24  on duty to promptly execute key production operations

• Fully replace human operations of various kinds in the system based on screen recognition and semantic interpretation technologies

• Zero mistakes in key operations, eliminating human errors in security management in the operation and maintenance

• Free up manual labors from repetitive tasks like backing up, upgrading, and configuration management, to focus on technology and business innovation

Typical application scenarios: Cyclone Intelligent Operation and Maintenance Platform

• Batch installation of applications: No human operations on SSH or RDP, and simplified and replaced repetitive tasks, especially for teams supporting hundreds of technical applications where those applications can be automatically installed in batch

• Batch data processing: Hand over tasks that do not require human intervention to operation and maintenance robots, from restarting services to sending alerts to operators, , freeing up IT for completing high-value work

• Data backup and recovery: Manual backup performed on the server by IT staffs, which requires several hours per week, can be completed by robots to achieve the best results, and avoid errors caused by distracting mind

• System diagnosis: The operation and maintenance robot can be seamlessly integrated with existing application system environments and technologies to simulate human operations for collecting data from systems, then generate reports and send them to the maintenance team at a certain interval specified in the rules

In the past, workers at the  primary level are not only responsible for the daily maintenance of systems like power grid equipment operation and maintenance, marketing, measurement, procurement, operation and inspection， etc. but also for tasks like data completion, revision and summary reporting, which is a huge workload, and prone to errors.

With the intelligent operation and maintenance platform going alive, a large number of repetitive and tedious transactional tasks can be automatically performed by robots, allowing employees to focus on more important ones. And it also can keep logs and archives according to regulatory and company requirements, where all records can be  traced back to meet security compliance and audit requirements. The intelligent operation and maintenance platform has brought significant economic and social benefits to the provincial power company.