General Electric Company

Timothy Lee Janssen

William Forrester Seely

Benjamin David Laskowski

John Joseph Raffensperger

Karl Dean Minto

Michael Joseph Alexander

Christopher Eugene Long

Paul William Plummer

Vijay Anand Raghavendran Nenmeni

Karl Joseph Minto

Systems and methods for health monitoring and upgrade of a distributed controller are provided. According to one embodiment of the disclosure, a method for health monitoring and upgrade of a distributed controller may commence with receiving, by a lower level controller from a high-level controller, high-level control references. The method may further include generating low-level control references for a hardware asset based at least in part on the high-level control references. The method may include monitoring the network connection and detecting an error in the network connection. In response to the detection of the error in the network connection, a control of the hardware asset may be transferred to the low-level controller. The method may further include determining that the network connection has been restored. In response to the determination that the network connection has been restored, the control of the hardware asset may be transferred to the high-level controller.

Systems and methods for health monitoring and upgrade of a distributed controller

Exemplary embodiments described in this disclosure pertain to a system that includes a high-level controller coupled to a low-level controller in an arrangement that allows the high-level controller to cooperate with the low-level controller for controlling a power generation unit. The high-level controller generates supplementary signals and/or supplementary code that is provided to a surrogate controller. The surrogate controller uses the supplementary signals and/or supplementary code to generate control software that is provided to the low-level controller for controlling certain operational aspects of the power generation unit that cannot be independently controlled by the low-level controller. If the high-level controller is placed in an independent mode of operation for any reason, the surrogate controller continues to cooperate with the low-level controller for controlling various operations of the power generation unit that were being controlled by the low-level controller prior to the high-level controller entering the independent mode of operation.

Multi-level controller systems and methods for controlling a physical asset

The disclosed embodiments relate to a system and method that allows air to be extracted from a plurality of gas turbine engines and fed to a downstream process, even in situations in which one or more of the gas turbine engines are operating in a part load condition. For example, in an embodiment, a method includes monitoring signals representative of a header pressure of a header, or a pressure of extraction air flow from one or more gas turbine engines to the header, or both, and maintaining substantially continuous flows of extraction air from the gas turbine engines to the header. The substantially continuous flows are maintained when the gas turbine engines are under symmetric and asymmetric load conditions.

System and method for air extraction from gas turbine engines

Growing community of inventors

Schenectady, NY, United States of America

Timothy Lee Janssen