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Title: ADVANCED MONITORING TO IMPROVE COMBUSTION TURBINE/COMBINED CYCLE CT/(CC) RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY AND MAINTAINABILITY (RAM)

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/836114· OSTI ID:836114

Power generators are concerned with the maintenance costs associated with the advanced turbines that they are purchasing. Since these machines do not have fully established operation and maintenance (O&M) track records, power generators face financial risk due to uncertain future maintenance costs. This risk is of particular concern, as the electricity industry transitions to a competitive business environment in which unexpected O&M costs cannot be passed through to consumers. These concerns have accelerated the need for intelligent software-based diagnostic systems that can monitor the health of a combustion turbine in real time and provide valuable information on the machine's performance to its owner/operators. EPRI, Impact Technologies, Boyce Engineering, and Progress Energy have teamed to develop a suite of intelligent software tools integrated with a diagnostic monitoring platform that will, in real time, interpret data to assess the ''total health'' of combustion turbines. The Combustion Turbine Health Management System (CTHM) will consist of a series of dynamic link library (DLL) programs residing on a diagnostic monitoring platform that accepts turbine health data from existing monitoring instrumentation. The CTHM system will be a significant improvement over currently available techniques for turbine monitoring and diagnostics. CTHM will interpret sensor and instrument outputs, correlate them to a machine's condition, provide interpretative analyses, project servicing intervals, and estimate remaining component life. In addition, it will enable real-time anomaly detection and diagnostics of performance and mechanical faults, enabling power producers to more accurately predict critical component remaining useful life and turbine degradation.

Research Organization:
Electric Power Research Institute (US)
Sponsoring Organization:
(US)
DOE Contract Number:
FC26-01NT41233
OSTI ID:
836114
Resource Relation:
Other Information: PBD: 30 Sep 2004
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English