Health monitoring of control system in a power station

Abstract

The large number of units and their wide geographic dispersion present logistical challenges for both day-to-day maintenance and broader corporate planning and operations. The objective of health monitoring is to develop knowledge about the condition of a system to enable an assessment of its state-of-health (SoH). The SoH may indicate that a fault is present or that there is an impending failure. Appropriate actions can then be taken to manage the failure or prepare planned maintenance activities. This paper presents an innovative solution to develop on-line monitoring technology to promote overall plant health, detect incipient problems, and improve operations and maintenance productivity. This on-line system can collect and analyze component condition data in real time from across its entire fleet. This approach is demonstrated and implemented at a power station in India of 2000 MW capacity (4 × 500 MW units).