How to Connect Real-Time Industrial Process Data to Power BI
- Paul Gowans
- 41 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Power BI consistently ranks as one of the most popular business intelligence products on the market. Many organisations already use it for financial reporting, sales tracking, and operational dashboards. But for operators of oil and gas platforms, manufacturing plants, and renewable energy assets, a challenge exists in getting process data from historians, SCADA systems, and control systems into Power BI effectively.
The key reason is that Power BI was designed for structured, tabular data. With Industrial process data being time-series, connecting the two has traditionally required custom development, SQL expertise, or expensive third-party solutions that are complex to configure and maintain.
What the Power BI Industrial Connector does
Intelligent Plant's Power BI Industrial Connector solves this issue directly. The connector was one of the first Microsoft certified connectors, released in March 2019, and available within Power BI Desktop by default. It connects to the Industrial App Store to pull real-time and historical process data from a wide range of industrial historians and data sources, and it does this without requiring SQL knowledge, complex architecture, or data to leave your network.
App Store Connect, our free data connectivity tool that underpins the platform, links to a wide range of industrial data sources through native drivers and standard industrial protocols. Native data source drivers include:
AVEVA OSIsoft PI, Asset Framework, and AVEVA Wonderware,
Siemens S7,
OPC Classic and OPC UA,
Modbus TCP, and Serial,
MQTT,
MTConnect,
RabbitMQ
For historians and systems not natively supported, connectivity is typically available via OPC Classic or OPC UA, a universal connection layer for most industrial control systems and historians. Custom drivers can also be developed for specific requirements.
The key benefit with Intelligent Plant's set up is that your data stays on your own infrastructure at all times. The connection is outgoing only and does not compromise network security.
What data you can bring into Power BI
The connector handles two distinct types of industrial data:
Process data - real-time and historical readings from sensors, transmitters, and control systems. Tag values, timestamps, and aggregated data at configurable granularity (hourly, daily, custom intervals).
Alarm and event data - This data is often completely untapped for reporting purposes, but it is where some of the most valuable operational insights live. Intelligent Plant's Alarm Analysis KPIs can be accessed through the connector, meaning you can develop quality alarm summary dashboards without needing to perform the typical calculations needed to get those KPIs
Why combining process and corporate data matters
The real value of the connector emerges when process data and corporate data are brought together in the same dashboard. One oil and gas client discovered, by combining process and financial data for the first time, that the operational costs of continuing production from a mature well were exceeding the revenue it was generating. Had the two data sets remained separate, production may have continued unnecessarily at a loss.
A manufacturing client with multiple global facilities used the connector to avoid building an internal solution - a process that would have taken around three years and cost an estimated $500,000 in development resource alone. By using the Industrial Connector instead, they were able to start gaining insights much sooner, with Intelligent Plant estimating savings of over $800,000 over a five-year period when accounting for development costs, ongoing SQL support, and the value of earlier access to business intelligence.
How to get started
If you are interested in testing out the Power BI Industrial Connector, we do have demo data sources available. The connector can be found within Power BI Desktop by navigating to the connectors list, and searching for "Industrial App Store". To use the connector, your organisation will need to have already registered for the Industrial App Store, and you will need to have signed in to the Industrial App Store. After that, it is just a case of selecting the available demo data sources. This video provides a basic guide on how to use the demo data sources once you're signed up - Accessing and using the Power BI Industrial Connector
For information on connecting your organisation's data sources, get in touch with the Intelligent Plant team.
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