title: 200. Emerson Addresses Power Industry’s AI-Driven Demand Surge
author: The POWER Podcast
contenttype: podcast
publication: The POWER Podcast
published: 2025-12-01T15:32:29
sourceurl: http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/2222109416-user-755104578-200-emerson-addresses-power-industrys-ai-driven-demand-surge.mp3
word_count: 2950
Hi, everyone. I'm Aaron Larson, executive editor of Power Magazine, and you are listening to the Power Podcast. On today's episode, I'm joined by Seth Harris. Seth is the growth director for Emerson's Power Business in North America. Seth, thanks for coming on the program. Please tell a little bit about yourself and about Emerson. Thanks, Aaron, and thanks to the Power Magazine, folks as well. I've been with Emerson, just had my 20th anniversary, actually, bounced around the company in a handful of different roles, including customer service, did a little bit of acquisition and integration, whole handful of years and a number of different roles around. Customer and engagement, field sales, business unit integration across the large portfolio that Emerson has, and a number of different industry segments. It's been a few years in the data management space. Seeing that kind of come back full circle here, and certainly we'll touch on some of those key components during today's discussion. And then squarely landed in the power space now, specifically focused on it for Emerson and our business here in North America for the last 12 months, just over a year now. For those listeners who are not familiar with Emerson, whole host of items, as it relates to our offering for the both traditional kind of legacy thermal-based power generation assets. But we also have a number of solutions that tie back into hydro power, the advent of renewables in the last handful of years. And then maybe lesser known to the audience is a few years back Emerson made the acquisition of OSI based in Minnesota. And that was a creative to our portfolio around transmission and distribution software products as well. So pretty extensive portfolio that I look forward to talking a little bit more about during today's. Thanks for the overview, Seth. To get things started, I'd like to have you touch on some of the trends that you're seeing, specifically those that are affecting the power industry and markets. Yeah, certainly not news to I'm guessing to anybody who's listening to the podcast today or in the future, but certainly an exciting time to be in the power space. Maybe exciting because you've got more business than you've had in recent years, but also with that more more business and more opportunity comes more challenges. And so maybe I'll touch on some of that aspects first. Well, of course, we know that there's a huge uptick in demand for for new power sources. A lot of cases driven by the by the data center side. Certainly, that's the headline industry segment. Overarching increasing demand is exists across the spectrum, from commercial to residential and industrial or all driving driving growth. Not really is putting a strain on resources like we haven't seen in quite some time, at least a decade or two. Everything from project execution resources, engineering, construction, all the way to manufacturers like us, an our ability to deliver and and spool up manufacturing capabilities around power specific resources has been. Well, it's a welcome to challenge like I touched on before, but certainly one of the ones that that we are facing an uphill uphill, but tenable task in front of us. And you mentioned the data centers. That's something that has really come upon the market like gangbusters just in the past year, you know, prior to last summer, we really hadn't heard much about it, but now it's it's one of the only things people talk about is the demand and how much we're getting from from these data centers. How is that affecting, you know, existing assets out there and what's being done to kind of accommodate this growth that's upon us? Yeah, I one of my favorite things here of late Aaron is this concept of the fact that I'm focused on the power market, but I can't tell you the last time I was able to have a conversation about power without somehow referencing the data center aspect of it. So certainly a unique driver, again, as I noted, pushing from multitude of different demands centers, but data centers is the headline. And for rightfully so, the billions, if not trillions of capital that's being pushed from from the major tech companies is really putting the power industry in a very interesting place. And one, you've you've got manufacturers from turbines to her sigs to folks like us who provide control systems and valves and instruments, all facing, you know, unprecedented demand or at least demand that that's putting us in a position for for secure business free years to come. And as we look to spool up those resources I touched on before to meet that demand, we're we're also faced with challenges in those existing assets. The ability to deliver power as quickly as possible is certainly top of mind as this kind of race to deliver on the technology promises coming from from AI in the various use cases for data centers, as really put those existing assets in a place where they have to to focus on driving the most efficiency and reliability they possibly can't. Of course, there's always been challenges around that historically and delivering power when the demand was high and then managing those reliability concerns through the downtime or slower times. But now, even more so, in some cases, the contracts that are being negotiated around these data centers are driving uptime and reliability into the five nines type expectations. And so the concerns around costs have been amplified even further. And so that's driving investments in those existing assets as well to to ensure that the plant life is running as efficiently as possible, but also so that they in many cases extending plants that were expected to be shuttered or at least on their pathway to that in some cases for many years or even a decade in some cases. Yeah, I think that's an interesting trend that we've seen. You know, where where plants have been scheduled to shut down and been all of a sudden, hey, we need that power. Let's let's keep this plan around. Now they need to invest in these facilities. So have you seen a lot of people coming to you with requests for new technology on these older plants? We have Aaron. We have. As the kind of industry is progressed from from maybe legacy 40 or 50 year old assets to newer generation types, whether that's gas based combustion turbines or the mix that we've seen come in based on the back of of wind solar, the re ignition of of hydro, et cetera. But from our standpoint, the opportunity to take some of those learnings from say the last decade or two with putting those higher efficiency sources online. And then now retrofitting back those into the existing spaces has been a bit of a out to say a boom from an Emerson standpoint. Of course, because the technologies come a long way since those are the so these were originally built, of course. But in many cases, the way that we operate or expect to run them is also changing the mix of renewables is the most obvious one and how that's challenging, you know, ramp rates or efficiency concerns around existing facilities, but even things like emissions and whatnot. So one one example in particular is operating HP drum or drum level control on steam recovery units and just taking the radar technology from our Rosemount business and deploying that in a way that enables customers to have a much tighter, more disfinite understanding of where level actually exists and that that's traditionally very challenging application, which means that we're able to deliver on on a higher reliability through startup and shutdown cycles and not to mention when you're kind of breaching the cost of operating expectations in terms of pressure and temperature, you have a much tighter control on where that levels that does less disruptions than just one example. And you kind of touched on AI and how that's being implemented into different systems and components and how is Emerson using it in some of your newer offerings? Yeah, it's a good question, Aaron. Lots of the whether you're talking about data centers and then demand for more power to run AI or just because it's the fancy new acronym that everybody wants to talk about, it is here and now. And so I'll actually talk about it from a couple of different angles. One, I touched on on my in my bio that I had spent a few years in the data management space towards the detail in the last decade and into 2021-2022. Much of what we talked about back then is it's truly coming to fruition today based on the need for granular data. And so the place I'll start is we have lots of instruments and valves that are providing primary measurement whether that's about position or flow rate information, temperature pressure, all common kind of primary variables as we refer to them. And certainly those are critical to take advantage of new applications for that data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc. But one of the oftentimes forgotten components is actually the diagnostic values that are embedded in some of these instruments and valves. And so we've seen a handful of customers including a major utility here in the southeastern portion of the US take advantage of what we refer to as device technical files or this ability to have a default configuration file for some of those high value add instruments. For example, our our Fisher control valves with a with a DVC or digital valve controller built on to it has a whole host of of ancillary device variables that are built in that when you can interpret and integrate those into the obation control system, you have a much higher ability to then implement that extra set of data into AI. Some other examples of that are around cordialis metering and providing diagnostics around say flow profile or even looking at say calibration health of pressure transmitters or something along those lines. When you take the combination of the primary values again flow rate temperature pressure and then you layer on top that device diagnostic information and you feed it into a control system that's being enabled with AI in the case of our space, we have the ovation 4.0 platform that was just released earlier this year. It is by definition AI enabled out of the box. So we've been doing some testing with a with a number of different power generation companies over the last 12 months or so and are happy to say that as of the release for ovation 4.0 here in in May, we have our o ovation assistance that is built into 4.0 and enabling everything from kind of user based interrogation kind of your base level use around AI, but also some advanced applications where even through kind of common startup procedures or shutdown procedures or maybe critical shifts in operating parameters, what we like to think about it is taking your best most seasoned operator and essentially empowering the AI engine with the expertise that that seasoned operator may take. So really is a combination of all of that information from device field level primary measurement and device diagnostics all the way up into the structure of the network and into ovation as a platform to take advantage of AI both today and certainly we're just now starting that that journey around the data that's available. We've talked about how existing plants have been extended of course with the growth that we're seeing we're seeing a lot of new plants coming online and even new technology you know there's there's kind of a talk of a renaissance in nuclear that we could see coming you know very soon and and of course renewables are growing like gangbusters so how is Emerson delivering on on all of the different technology that's being utilized in in next generation facilities. A good question Aaron certainly the mix of generation is here to stay while many of the banner headlines today are around keep natural gas available here in the United States or reberging or extending life around coal plants a lot of the banner headlines are around nuclear as you noted. The way we like to position ourselves and feel like we're in in terms of being a market leader is around how that technology can be distributed from Emerson across all of those assets. In many cases as as most powerful providers are aware there is a cross-seating or a desire to drive towards remote operations especially in some of these disparate or smaller distributed energy type scenarios and so the plethora of devices that are are available from Emerson in allowing to integrate that data and actually I even go one step further the ability to take both the generation side so whether that's wind solar combustion term and but also take advantage of of native integration into a innovation type platform around transmission and distribution assets as well and so that's one of the things we're really excited about you may have been familiar with the ovation green skater platform and our digital grid management suite that's part of the asthmatech business we have the ability to integrate those tnd assets and then couple them with generation and at the highest levels of our of our custom organization to optimize and deliver on the dynamic demands that we're seeing especially as the large loads from data centers come online in the coming years and how have customer needs changed we've talked a little bit about how the workforce has shrunk and it's harder to find those tech savvy employees how can your technology help kind of fill that gap or or fill some of those maybe easier roles in the in the control room yes regardless of which industry you're talking about this challenge is faced today I touched on AI and that's certainly something that has some promise in years to come and certainly we're seeing some early shoots of a positeness around augmenting those folks but even just redesigning how present day operators are interfacing with their their asset one of the big updates related to to ovation 4.0 was a complete redesign around the human interface much more intuitive you know the ability to be much more creative in terms of how that that operator might be interfacing with with the screens and then really embed in that the the I guess the things we come to be familiar with in our personal lines and whether that's you know screen alerts to diagnostics scenarios that need our attention and even going one step further helping take advantage of prioritizing those things not just from a alarm rationalization but looking at how things might be interconnected and whatnot so we're early on that journey but at the same time there's a whole host of things to come especially as we integrate those various data sources that I touched on earlier so exciting times especially do we think about augmenting and enabling that workforce that's either just getting started or maybe a little bit earlier in their career to take the places of that generation that's that's nearing retirement well Seth I mean this has been a really interesting conversation I we've touched on a lot of things is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you think would be important to mention before we wrap up thanks for the question the one piece that I want to touch on here at the tail end Aaron is just recognizing that one of the things we see that is the most challenging for the power industry right now is just the ability to to flat out execute we all see the demand we all see the futures it relates to what we need to deliver on but how we get from where we are today to that future point whether it's a year down the road or five years down the road we want our customers and the power industry as a whole including EPCs and including the OEMs and in the ecosystem of providers for the network to know that we're here as a partner whether that's providing on-time delivery whether that's providing ample engineering resources whether that's project management our team to help execute around the construction lifecycle of a new facility all the way through maintenance reliability operations and future upgrades we we are here and expect to be your partner going forward through the end of the 2020s and certainly into the 2030s and beyond we appreciate the opportunity here and look forward to talking to you again in the future thanks that I I have actually worked at different facilities that used Emerson equipment so I can tell you from my own personal perspective it was great it made the operation of the plant that much easier and more efficient and I think you know what you've come out with in in the recent past is is even better than before so I applaud you and thank you and again for listeners I've been speaking with Seth Harris he's the growth director for Emerson's power business in North America it's been a pleasure speaking with you and appreciate your sharing with our audience thank you Aaron and thanks to the power magazine folks have a good rest of your day