Scrubgrass: Data Saves Jobs In Coal Country

At OSIsoft’s User Conference 2017 in San Francisco, Scrubgrass engineering manager Jeff Campbell told the story of how he used the PI System to:

• Combine a variety of data streams into a powerful tool that plant operators can use to make real-time decisions
• Generate forecasts for optimizing the timing of planned equipment outages, one of which saved Scrubgrass $160,000 in a single week
• Build a business case for saving the plant from shutdown

When your business model is exquisitely sensitive to a changing environment, an investment in real-time data can make the difference between survival and shutdown. That was the case for the Scrubgrass Generating Plant, a 35-employee, 85-megawatt waste-coal-fired power plant in Kennerdell, Pennsylvania. In the last few years, Scrubgrass has used OSIsoft data systems to overcome new market challenges that have already shuttered similar plants.