Industry maintenance requirements
Over the past decades, many hydroelectric power stations have changed from continuous base load operation to periodic and partial load operation. This periodic operation has proven to be more cost-effective from an economical viewpoint, but places additional load on the generation units due to the increased frequency of starts/stops. Subsequently it is important to implement an effective safety and condition monitoring solution to ensure incipient faults are detected in time to avoid catastrophic failures and consequential downtime.
Many newer hydroelectric power stations are purpose built for peak load operation, such as pumped storage installations. These units are subject to multiple stops and starts like the periodic operations units, but with the added importance of availability on demand. Peaking hydroelectric generating units have to be fully operational when needed. An effective condition monitoring strategy is therefore required to ensure this availability on demand.
Monitoring Systems
Most of our products for hydro monitoring can be easily interfaced to the customer’s process control system (DCS or SCADA), enterprise and maintenance management systems, emergency shut down system, operator work stations and even other monitoring systems that exist on-site. In many of these applications remote monitoring with secure communications over long distances is a requirement. The drawing below is an example:
Monitoring strategy
Over the past decades, many hydroelectric power stations have changed from continuous base load operation to periodic and partial load operation. This periodic operation has proven to be more cost-effective from an economical viewpoint, but places additional load on the generation units due to the increased frequency of starts/stops. Subsequently it is important to implement an effective safety and condition monitoring solution to ensure incipient faults are detected in time to avoid catastrophic failures and consequential downtime.
We offer several monitoring solutions ranging from vibration monitoring machine protection systems for the simplest hydro turbines to comprehensive monitoring solutions for larger machines that include process and efficiency and complete generator monitoring (PDA, air gap, magnetic flux, etc.).
For more information about the different types of monitoring techniques, please have a look at the the pictures below.
