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.

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