The Adoption of Value Driven Systematic Maintenance Approaches by Gas Turbine Operators

Cost reduction is no longer sufficient to remain competitive in today‟s more economically aggressive world. One way to deal with this situation is to focus on creating sustainable added value by means of a holistic approach that uses the embedded knowledge within the organization to achieve optimal over-all equipment effectiveness. This highly effective way of managing physical assets is gaining popularity under the name "Asset Management." Because asset management is also gaining importance for gas turbine operators, ETN has decided in 2009 to convene a working group on asset management. This paper summarizes the results of the working group in its first year. It starts by giving an overview of recent socio-economic changes that are affecting operators of Gas Turbine based plants and it summarizes some of the latest technological developments that provide opportunities to address these changes. It will then give an example by one of the working group members in each of the three areas that have been prioritized by the working group. The paper shows how Alstom has used Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) to trade off risk taking (operation) versus risk mitigation (maintenance) in order to improve plant reliability. It further shows a methodology developed by the University of Roma TRE for the production optimization of a pool of power plants. The method uses data collected by the plant monitoring system as a basis for optimization, taking into account maintenance aspects in relation to plant component life consumption and related risks. This was possible in a fast and reliable way by adopting suitable neural models that represent the physical-chemical model behaviour. Finally, the University of Cranfield will show the importance of data quality and how observability analysis will help to ensure an optimal selection of instrumentation to detect the desired faults.