Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) for substations project overview
An EPRI Tailored Collaboration project establishing guidelines and tools for implementing Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) in substations is nearing completion and final results are being presented at this Substation RCM Conference. The ultimate goal of this RCM project is to help utilities slash substation operations and maintenance costs by optimizing equipment maintenance intervals. Preventive maintenance (PM) programs typically have been developed on a component-by-component basis, relying heavily on equipment vendors` maintenance recommendations. RCM is a logical alternative to traditional PM programs. It is intelligent, common sense maintenance that is function-based rather than component-based. First developed by the airline industry in the 1960s and further developed and applied to the nuclear industry by EPRI in the 1980s, RCM ranks the importance of each function of a system, calculates the impact the loss of the function would have on the overall system, and drives the design of appropriate maintenance tasks for each function. The nuclear industry reaped savings of at least 25% by adopting RCM, and one utility that tried this approach for substation maintenance reported savings of 13% in one year.
- Research Organization:
- Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (United States); Cambias and Associates, Covington, LA (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 430392
- Report Number(s):
- EPRI-TR--106069; CONF-9512103--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Substation Reliability Centered Maintenance
Substation Reliability Centered Maintenance