AVEVA signs 3D nuclear engineering partnership with EDF
AVEVA has signed a long-term partnership with EDF to develop its 3D nuclear engineering program.
AVEVA will help drive EDF’s SWITCH digital transformation program with its AVEVA E3D Design solution and other components of the AVEVA Unified Engineering solution, and strengthen its engineering design portfolio by way of faster design and delivery of its nuclear plants as well as advanced safety and performance standards.
By streamlining data from different design disciplines – including mechanical, electrical and civil works – several hundred users across different global locations will be able to work together within a digital twin repository, eliminating siloed engineering design approaches, avoiding data inconsistencies, and removing duplication.
AVEVA technology will enable users to collaborate on shared 3D models simultaneously, thus improving the competitiveness of EDF’s nuclear engineering design processes.
This partnership builds on a long-term relationship in which AVEVA has supported EDF with 3D digital engineering solutions at its N4 nuclear plants since the 1980s. To date, AVEVA’s capabilities have enabled EDF to drive its sustainable nuclear vision by reducing work hours and enhancing data consistency.
The new partnership between AVEVA and EDF is expected to generate:
- Reduction in design work times and engineering work times
- Decrease in the need for re-work
- Faster development rate of 3D models
- Greater project visibility for all project stakeholders
- Greater collaboration between design and engineering teams
- Extended asset lifespans and the ability to reduce CO₂ emissions
The new agreement will see AVEVA digital design systems implemented as the gold standard for all new EDF nuclear projects.
EDF Group Executive Director – Engineering and New Nuclear Project, Xavier Ursat, said the SWITCH digital transformation program is critical to reinforce EDF’s ambition of producing low-carbon electricity and achieving our carbon neutrality objective by 2050 across its portfolio.
"This extended long-term partnership supports our engineering design and operations teams and empowers them to optimise operational performance and to exploit nuclear energy efficiently," he said.
AVEVA CEO Peter Herweck said its digital engineering design can support EDF in driving their net-zero energy strategy. "With our new agreement, AVEVA will help EDF accelerate engineering collaboration, connect teams and unlock higher performance through shared contextual data and intelligence. We look forward to assisting EDF’s expert engineers to cut design time, improve collaboration and accelerate efficient decision-making to develop the nuclear industry of the future.”
EDF lists eight nuclear sites in its UK portfolio - Torness, Hunterston B, Dungeness B (whose closure was announced in June), Heysham 1 and 2, Hinkley Point B, Hartlepool and Sizewell B - and between them they generate around 20% of the country's electricity.
AVEVA recently launched Vision AI Assistant 2021 – an image classification-based analytics tool. The AI solution, which can be integrated into AVEVA System Platform and Operations Management Interface and AVEVA Insight, enables customers to use video and images from existing general-purpose cameras and convert them into user-friendly information and timely alerts.
Designed for low latency industrial environments, Vision AI Assistant leverages deep learning to train and deploy 24x7 artificial intelligence models to enhance situational awareness to help operators focus on the task at hand without continuously monitoring live camera feeds.
