Developing Life Cycle Management Plans for Power Plant Components

A process to develop life cycle management (LCM) plans for power plant components is described. an LCM plan is a guide to make operational decision for a piece of equipment over its life cycle. an LCM typically consists of preventive maintenance schedule, condition monitoring and inspection activities, replacement or refurbishment plans and spares management. It is developed on the basis of component failure modes, operating history, maintenance practices, ageing, spares and obsolescence. Once an LCM plan has been formulated it can be compared with other alternative LCM strategies in order to minimize the long-term costs over the plant lifetime. for this purpose, a program comprising of three modules is built using Excel VBA. the first module deals with failure rate estimation of a component based on right censored failure data. the second module attempts to estimate the impact of different preventive maintenance schedules on failure rates and the third module is a life cycle cost calculator which estimates the net present value of future costs over the plant lifetime. © 2012 IEEE

Reliability Evaluation of Distribution Systems Containing Renewable Distributed Generations

Reliability evaluation of distribution networks under grid-tied and islanded microgrid modes is presented. the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) algorithm is applied to a modified RBTS Bus 2 distribution network. the network includes three types of distributed energy resources, namely, solar photovoltaic (PV), wind turbine (WT), and diesel turbine generator (DTG). These distributed generators contribute to supply part of the load during grid-connected mode but supply 100% of the load in the islanded microgrid mode. This study shows that the implementation of distributed generations can improve the reliability indices of the distribution network. © 2012 IEEE

Improving life cycle management plans for power plant components

Life cycle management (LCM) combines a set of technical and economic activities with the specific goal of improving the long term economic value of an asset. It is necessary to perform a sound LCM exercise on the utility or industrial asset to maintain the profitability of a plant. In most industries, the maintenance budget is either higher than optimal or lower than required, that result in expensive outages, damages and accidents. An LCM plan is a guide to make operational decision for a component over its life cycle. LCM typically consists of a preventive maintenance schedule, condition monitoring, inspection activities, replacement or refurbishment plans and spares management. It is developed based on a study of component failure modes, operating history, maintenance practices, ageing, spares and obsolescence. Once an LCM plan has been formulated, it can be compared with other alternative LCM strategies in order to minimize the long term costs over the plant lifetime. Utilities predominantly develop life cycle management plans based on heuristic approaches. Existing work does not accurately cover the impact of maintenance on equipment reliability and cost. In this thesis, a state diagram is developed to simulate the aging, inspection, maintenance, repair, failure and overhaul cycle of a component throughout its lifetime. This diagram can help in deciding the optimal maintenance policy and also quantify the impact of maintenance on reliability and cost. Probabilistic tools are developed that help in the evaluation of an LCM plan and to further optimize the plans. A suite of software built for the LCM comprises of modules to: Estimate the failure rate using Weibull parameters Estimate the effect of maintenance on the Weibull parameters Calculate the life cycle cost based on maintenance cost, failure and replacement --Abstract, page iii

Strategic issues in the emerging world order

This lecture was delivered by Dr Srinath Raghavan during the First NIAS-DST Training Programme on ‘Impact of Globalisation’ held during October 20-24, 200