APPLYING PRECISION INTO PROACTIVE MAINTENANCE IN NIGERIA ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY

Power station plants and equipments are required to run for well beyond their intended lifetime. Opening up machines for inspections is expensive and owners need to consider all relevant information in making the decision. Problems in power station machine which reduce machine efficiency and reliability such as shaft misalignment, deposits on blades can be detected and monitoring using monitoring by performance analysis. This paper outlines some of the methods using precision techniques, which have contributed to proactive maintenance in the world - class- precision maintenance. Some of the tools used in this case are outlined and recommends that proper use of these tools in the Nigerian electric power stations could improve maintenance efforts and increase reliability, availability and customers’ satisfactions. Hence this paper can be legitimised by training, procedures and changes in human thinking and behaviours and largely getting to the roots of the errors. Root cause analysis is the tool designed to follow mechanism back to physical roots and probably eliminate it by training, procedures and changes which will form the basis for precision based reliability and knowing that predictive technology is the key to breaking error chains