Press Release
January 2016

Michael Hastings
Senior Technical Copywriter
Phone: + 45 7741 2639
E-mail: michael.hastings@bkvibro.com

DEM of Slovenia selects Brüel & Kjær Vibro for monitoring all their cascade hydropower stations

The Slovenian power company DEM (Dravske elektrarne Maribor) has awarded a contract to Brüel & Kjær Vibro for the retrofit of the two hydro-generating units
at the Formin plant for machine protection and condition monitoring. The contract includes vibration, air gap and magnetic flux monitoring capability, as well as services and training. 
 
This is the last of eight major hydropower stations on the Drava River that have been retrofit with Brüel & Kjær Vibro’s Compass 6000TM monitoring system since 2010. A centralized server was installed at the DEM Condition Monitoring headquarters in Maribor that gives remote access to all the generating units.
The Drava River hydropower stations (representing around 25% of the total energy produced in Slovenia) were commissioned from 1918 to 1978, so condition monitoring plays an important role in maximising machine uptime while reducing maintenance expenses of the aging equipment. Boštjan Gregorc, condition monitoring diagnostic specialist at DEM, summarized by saying “since Compass 6000 TM was installed in 2010, maintenance has changed from time interval based to condition based. The inspection shutdown interval for the units has now been increased from 25,000 to 30,000 hours.”
Self-sufficiency of the DEM condition monitoring group in terms of diagnostics, equipment maintenance and operation and administration tasks is achieved by systematic training between each project installation. “We were able to reduce the initial capital burden while at the same time ensure that the condition monitoring tasks are optimally integrated in our operations and maintenance functions.” says Andrej Kohn, condition monitoring system specialist at DEM. “It also gives us time to build up condition monitoring experience and use this on each subsequent hydropower station as the monitoring systems are installed.”

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Company

Brüel & Kjær Vibro is the leading worldwide independent supplier of condition monitoring solutions for rotating machinery. The comprehensive product range comprises vibration sensors (acceleration, velocity and displacement), vibration monitors, portable instruments and rack-based plant-wide integrated monitoring solutions. These products plus a suite of comprehensive services fulfil the most demanding applications for safety, condition and performance monitoring of rotating machinery. Monitoring in the power industry is a strategic focus area with numerous applications in the conventional thermal, cogeneration, nuclear, hydro and wind energy sectors.

Based on 60 years of experience and a world-wide sales and support network, Brüel & Kjær Vibro’s monitoring solutions have successfully reduced downtime and maintenance costs and increased machine reliability for our customers world-wide. For more details, please refer to www.bkvibro.com.

Brüel & Kjær Vibro is part of Spectris plc, the leading supplier of productivity enhancing instrumentation and controls.