Benefits of Reliability Assessment in Operating Power Plants

The global energy market continues to face significant change, evolving over time in several dimensions. One of them is a structural change, where it went into de-regulation and that has become a viable opportunity and reality; another is clean technology as new generating alternatives with greater efficiency and “environmental friendliness” has become available. Today, there is a keen interest in power plants using the latest gas turbine technology, which has higher firing temperatures, greater output, and improved efficiencies and remains environmental friendly. With evolving markets and variations in prices, the importance of reliability has increased greatly. As these technologies evolve and improve, it is important to recognize that the operational performance and profitability is expected to be consistently on the rise. Consequently, market conditions and expectations continue to place a significant emphasis on the achievable level of reliability and availability, which in turn provides the importance on having feedback from the plants within the framework of quality data resulting in building up benchmarking statistics. ORAP® (Operational Reliability Analysis Program) which is owned by Strategic Power System Inc.® (SPS) tracks reliability and availability performance on gas turbines from various MW size ranges, manufacturers, applications, and duty cycles. NERC is another data source with several years of data from varied fuels and power plant types. This paper presents the importance of having benchmarking data from an independent third party and the results of quality analysis by OEM experts. This focused approach develops the methodology of setting targets for MTBF, MTTR, FOR and failure rate not only at system level but also even down to component level for any operating power plant. The reliability growth potential is identified and reliability techniques are applied.