News & Views, Volume 52 | An SIIQ™ Primer
POWER PLANT ASSET MANAGEMENT
SI’s technology differs from most systems by focusing on MODELING OF DAMAGE MECHANISMS (e.g. damage initiation and subsequent rate of accumulation) affecting components that, if a failure were to occur, would impact safety and reliability.
Figure 1. Typical architecture for connection to data historian.
SIIQ™ is part of the next-generation approach for managing assets through online monitoring and diagnostic (M&D) systems. The advancements in sensor technology, signal transmission (wired or wireless), data storage, and computing power allow for ever more cost-efficient collection and analysis of ‘Big Data.’
The online monitoring module of SI’s PlantTrack™ data management system can retrieve operating data from OSIsoft’s PI data historian (or other historians, for that matter – see above for typical architecture). Access to data from the historian is critical for moving beyond the stage of detecting adverse temperature events from the local surface-mounted thermocouples. Examination of pertinent data from select tags (as seen in Figure 3 of the article beginning page 29) is reviewed by SI experts to help derive a more optimal solution to mitigate further events. The benefit of the real-time monitoring is to detect improper operation and diagnose prior to damage progressing to failure. Continuously monitoring the condition allows for early remediation and potentially avoiding a failure that would result in loss of unit availability and possible personnel injury. Further, if monitoring indicates no issues are occurring, it may justify deferring a costly inspection.
