Universal performance monitor for power generators

Abstract

The invention broadly encompasses a system including a communications network, a plurality of remotely located data sources to provide power data, the power data including quantitative and qualitative data of one or more power generation units, and a performance monitor in communication with the plurality of remotely located data sources through the communications network, the performance monitor including a communications unit to extract the power data from the plurality of remotely located data sources, a data conversion unit to transform the power data into a common data format, a data store to store the transformed power data, and a user interface unit to display the transformed power data on one or more client devices through the communications network.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A system, comprising:
 a communications network;   a plurality of remotely located data sources to provide power data, the power data including quantitative and qualitative data of one or more power generation units,   wherein the quantitative data and qualitative data comprises (1) market data, (2) operational data, (3) alarms, and (4) tracking of monitored recorded events based on numerical thresholds including specific megawatt levels, and alerts when a number of megawatts produced at the one or more power generation units reaches the specific megawatt levels, wherein each of the specific megawatt levels reached requires a unique action or log entry to be recorded; and   a performance monitor in communication with the plurality of remotely located data sources through the communications network, the performance monitor including
 a communications unit to extract the power data from the plurality of remotely located data sources, 
 a data conversion unit to transform the power data into a common data format, 
 a data store to store the transformed power data, and 
 a user interface unit to display the transformed power data on one or more client devices through the communications network. 
   
     
     
         2 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the quantitative data includes supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data and/or market data. 
     
     
         3 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the quantitative data includes operational cost data of the one or more power generation units. 
     
     
         4 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the qualitative data includes event log data of the one or more power generation units. 
     
     
         5 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the communications unit includes a gateway application programming interface (API) unit to pull the power data from the plurality of remotely located data sources. 
     
     
         6 . The system of  claim 5 , wherein the conversion unit includes an interface API unit to communicate with the gateway API unit and to transform the power data into the common data format. 
     
     
         7 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the user interface unit includes an alarm unit to issue and track the alarms based on user-defined events. 
     
     
         8 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the user interface unit includes a reporting unit to display the interactive reports on the one or more client devices. 
     
     
         9 . The system of  claim 8 , wherein the reporting unit includes any one of a dashboard reporting interface, daily operational reporting interface, unit performance interface, ad-hoc SCADA query interface, and unit status communications interface.