Asset lifetime extension

Owners and operators coping with aging plants and sagging performance have to decide on asset lifetime extension: repair or relocate

Other than shutting down plants and getting out of the business, managers at aging facilities are left with this start choice: repair or relocate.

Electric power generators must manage a variety of aging production assets that are critical to system reliability. They are also faced with potentially huge costs when they need to replace these assets to maintain reliability. Making intelligent decisions about asset maintenance and replacement first requires accurate information about the failure patterns of these assets over time. However, most data elements that could shed light on such patterns -asset condition, operating envelop, maintenance patterns, or results of stratified inspection- are not widely available. Still, they must forecast their capital and O&M spending requirements every year, regardless of their understanding of such asset failures.

In addition to these gaps in data, a lack of effective analytical tools and processes make it even more difficult to support such budget allocation decisions. For the most part, capital funding decisions are being made using a simple but potentially inaccurate forecasting method of taking the average of asset failures over a certain period of time. This often means existing replacement or maintenance strategies are not linked to the costs and reliability that will be experienced in several years. Thus, one cannot quantitatively evaluate alternative strategies in order to select the best ones to implement. A more rigorous methodology is needed.

KEMA, as independent service provider, has developed a methodological tool to assess and evaluate condition, remaining life in a consistent way and to assure integrity and availability during the desired life span of equipment or components and the required in-depth technical knowledge to face these unbiased challenges: ALTIMA, KEMA’s Advanced Life Time Management Approach. The main items of lifetime management are:
- condition assessment
- remaining life assessment.

You can download an interesting article on this subject from the context menu on the right. This article "Future-proofing the present" was published in the November/December 2009 issue of Megawhat, the first power industry magazine in the Middle East region.