Conventional Energy Production

The most important goal of a power plant operator is to maximize the availability and performance of their power plant and to minimize the generating costs of energy. To reach this goal, the maintenance of the power plant is crucial and maintenance can account up to 30 % of the cost of the produced energy.Most modern power plants use a combination of scheduled maintenance and corrective maintenance. In this strategy, critical components, such as turbines and pumps, are serviced based on statistical trend data and less critical components are left to a run-to-failure strategy, where maintenance is not done until the machinery fails. These maintenance strategies are not cost optimized since scheduled maintenance usually results in either unnecessary repairs if servicing is done too frequently or potentially catastrophic failures if service is neglected. Ineffective maintenance not only wastes materials and resources, but lost operating time resulting from equipment failure is a significant expenditure to a power plant operator.Effective maintenance planning and scheduling is essential for shortening revision and downtime periods. Most of the revision work is done by external contractors and work delays can be expensive. By maintaining components based on their condition, revision work and cost can be optimized.Current condition based maintenance strategies usually rely on periodical measurements done by experts, because the power plant staff do not have the necessary skills to analyse the measurement data. Most power plants collect information that could be utilized in condition based maintenance, but the data is not used because it is difficult to interpret or because it lacks parameters for fault prediction. Implementing new sensors in power plant equipment can be difficult.