Project Name

Smart Fishery and Electricity Symbiosis Solutions Enhancement Project

NexAIoT Contact

Kevin Tseng Send an Email

Background

Taiwanese government actively promotes the energy transition and aims to increase the proportion of renewable energy to 20% of the total power generation by 2025. For this reason, the government is actively promoting ground-based solar power generation systems. "Fishery and electricity symbiosis system" is the accelerated goal this year (2020). First, it is hoped to develop solar photovoltaics through a multi-purpose method in one place and to improve the environment of the fishing grounds and create the prosperity of aquaculture fishery once again. To actively promote the development of "fishery and electricity symbiosis", Taiyan Green Energy has developed green power generation combined with aquaculture. It has joined hands with the Institute of Information Technology, National Taiwan Ocean University, and NexAIoT to build a 200KW fishery and electricity symbiosis demonstration site at North Gate, Tainan, focus on breeding white shrimp and grouper. NexAIoT was invited to participate in this project with its early investment in the AIoT field, accumulated leading global R&D experience, and concrete performance. NexAIoT ‘s iAT2000 cloud intelligence system meets the overall needs for AIoT design, construction, and implementation; it is the win-win strategy for fishery and electricity. iAT2000 system can guide the industrial development of smart aquaculture, improve the productivity of the traditional agricultural and fishery industries, achieve sustainable operations, and bring new value to Taiwan's agricultural and fishery sectors.




Challenges
Taiwan's aquaculture industry has a long history of development with great technology and a complete industrial structure. However, due to limited water and soil resources, the production of aquaculture cannot be increased significantly in recent years. Many countries have vast areas and abundant water resources, and they have the conditions for breeding development to maintain the competitiveness of the international global market. Small farmers have to deal with the problems of declining birthrates and able successors; the workforce structure is seriously insufficient. The management of aquaculture fisheries in Taiwan must make some structural changes.

Although there have been many IoT big data in agriculture in the past, there are too many uncertain factors in the environment, such as climate change, growth performance, water quality changes, etc. Even with big data, farmers still have to rely on their own experience to determine the next step of breeding behavior. Taiwan’s fishery sector highly depends on the individual experience of the industry and cannot provide a stable supply of a certain quality and quantity of farmed fish. In addition, the high cost of introducing new technologies makes it difficult for smallholders to afford. Therefore, with the support of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Council of Agriculture, NexAIoT must overcome the challenge of planning an AIoT system that meets the economic costs of smallholders from a digital perspective. Based on the iAT2000 cloud intelligent architecture, the farming environment, real-time water quality information, fishermen’s neuro experience, farming behavior, growth of fish species, and energy roots are truthfully internalized in the virtual world of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and integrated and reflected in the physical world. The positive feedback curve for the health and growth of fish species let the AI of smart farms combine with the Human Intelligence (HI) of fishermen to create intelligent monitoring, precise production, and automated aquaculture capabilities, and assist in the digital transformation of aquaculture fisheries.

Solution System Architecture Description

NexAIoT can not only provide OT program planning and technical consulting services for the field, but also assist the business owner in the environmental information, large data collection, aggregation, visualization implementation, and construction of aquaculture. Plus, the iAT2000 Cloud Intelligence System is initiated to deliver the seamlessly integrated IT & OT system services and automated breeding.

At first, the NexAIoT team will go to the fish farm to analyze, investigate, and plan the site. And then connect the iAT2000 network gateway device to nine sensors––dissolved oxygen, water temperature, pH, salinity, turbidity, ammonia nitrogen, nitrate, chlorophyll A, and Oxidation Reduction Potential (ORP). The power monitoring related equipment installation planning and implementation will take place to collect "facility factor" data to monitor water quality. NexAIoT will assist in the establishment of a common data platform that complies with the international standard OPC UA (iAT2000 NexUA) system architecture. The fish farm owner can monitor the display of information and real-time data abnormality warnings at any time through the iAT2000 SCADA monitoring system in the on-site central control room. Additionally, through the images sent by the submerged cameras, farmers can understand the "growth factors" of the aquacultures. Farmers can choose to modify equipment parameters based on experience and on-site observations or perform simulated predictions to make the best judgments, and then take over iAT2000 to implement automatic water quality adjustments, feeding, and other breeding decisions.

The iAT2000 war room will be established at the headquarters of Taiyan Green Energy to incorporated key information of fish farms in different fields for decision-makers. The physical world data is integrated with Microsoft Cloud to build a digital avatar, using machine learning and analysis to provide operational insights with improved management indicators. Machine learning will also dynamically learn farmers’ experience and knowledge and then achieve the effect of joint operation and decision-making optimization.

Results and Benefits

Using NexAIoT ‘s iAT2000 cloud intelligence technology, Taiyan Green Energy was able to have "agriculture and fishery-based green electricity" in one place and integrate technology into aquaculture fishery. The development of green electricity was combined with smart breeding to bring more profits to fishermen. In the past, Taiwan’s agriculture and fisheries relied heavily on "human experience," but now they need to rely on "data." With the combination of logic and experience, the Science and Technology Council won the 2019 U.S. Top 100 Technology Research and Development Award (R&D 100 Awards)––"Smart Agriculture Digital Clone." This technology digitized various unspoken knowledge of fishermen, and the analysis of different digital data, coupled with the "behavioral decision-making" of fishermen to train artificial intelligence, and draw optimized models like water quality management, aquaculture growth management, aquatic disease management, etc. The integration of the iAT2000 cloud intelligence technology and digital clone technology could reduce farmers' capital costs by 50% and increase production efficiency by 30%. With NexAIoT’s participation in the Smart Fishery and Electricity Symbiosis Solutions project, the quality, value, and output of Taiyan’s aquatic products were improved and made it easier for older fishermen to join fish farming, it also helped lower the threshold of aquaculture fishery farming skills and attracted more young people to return to their hometowns to enter the sector.

Look to the future, the combination of iAT2000 and the digital clone technology can be applied to agriculture, fishery, and even industrial fields. This solution established a full-process data-based, quality-analyzable, quality-grading technology with traceable production and sales history. The technology improved the farmers’ abilities of "smart monitoring" and "precision production," enhanced the productivity of traditional agricultural and fishery industries, and achieved sustainability, bringing new value to Taiwan's agriculture, fishery, and industry for industrial upgrading.