Maintaining the high reliability of power generating plants requires efficient access to unambiguous information about plant asset performance and condition. Prognostic and Health Management (PHM) systems can detect and trend anomalies in process parameters that are often associated with asset degradation. Expert Microsystems is providing this key technology to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to enable utilities to transform plant information into an accurate and consistent assessment of condition and risk for operating an entire fleet of aging power plant assets more productively. This assures that maintenance activities and capital investments can be prioritized based on an assessment of the current condition and relative risk of failure of each asset.
Risk Informed Decisions
EPRI’s goal is to develop, refine, and integrate methodologies and processes that use plant information to make risk-informed decisions on maintenance task scope, intervals and priorities. Expert Microsystems’ technology is used for anomaly identification and diagnosis, failure modes effects analysis, and risk-informed decision making in support of this objective. EPRI selected Expert Microsystems over competing technologies to develop EPRI’s Fleetwide Prognostic and Health Management Suite software because of our extensive PHM expertise and experience with enterprise scale software implementation.
Fleetwide Prognostic and Health Management Suite Features
The EPRI Fleetwide Prognostic and Health Management Suite employs a web-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA) design having an Oracle® database foundation and using Microsoft® .NET framework technology. The provided suite of web services perform PHM analysis and can deliver PHM information directly to the user via the customer’s existing enterprise portal products and well as through the software’s own web browser user interface.
The EPRI Fleetwide Prognostic and Health Management Suite is comprised of five interoperable web based products. The Asset Fault Signature (AFS) Database provides an industry-wide database of failure mode indicators for a wide range of power plant assets. The Diagnostic Advisor uses the AFS Database for assessing current plant information to determine the likely cause for any anomalies detected in the plant data. The Remaining Useful Life (RUL) Database provides an industry-wide database of prognostic life prediction models for a wide range of power plant assets. The Remaining Life Advisor uses the RUL Database for assessing current plant information and diagnostic results in order to estimate the remaining useful service life of aging plant assets. The Risk View product integrates the above information into a comprehensive view of plant failure risk and adds the element of failure consequence into the risk analysis.
Additional information on the EPRI Fleetwide Prognostic and Health Management Suite can be found in our Knowledge Center.