Significant change is taking place in the power generation market. We are witnessing structural change as we move to a deregulated and competitive global market. And we can also see significant technological change, as new products are driven towards improved efficiencies, greater output and environmental friendliness. Measuring the impact of these changes in terms of efficiency, output and reduced emissions is a straightforward exercise, and the ability to judge if the change has been positive is relatively objective.
However, these structural and technological changes have created challenges in terms of reliability and availability measurements.
• First, our measurement approach is obsolete and has no consideration for duty cycle… The demand, the mission profile, which must be achieved for the unit to meet its economic contribution value, is the single most important issue for power producers today.
• Second, if the measurements have no consideration for the demand that the unit must meet, then the measure is not tied to the profitability of the plant, and therefore the operators are forced to use non-standard measures to accommodate management reporting.
• And third, the strong relationship between effective plant operations and profitability demands “real time” data gathering from the unit control or plant DCS, and transformation of the data points into meaningful information for effective decision support, specifically related to the availability and reliability of systems, components, and the full plant, with a specific focus on measuring “demand” based availability and reliability.
This paper addresses the issue and the opportunities associated with developing both new standard for measuring demand related reliability and availability, as well as the focus on “real time” data capture.
Real-time data gathering in sensor networks
