Capital parts and scheduled inspections make up most of a gas turbine power plant's maintenance costs and operational risks. The risks and maintenance costs can both be optimized by careful inspections and parts planning over the gas turbine lifetime. Optimizing provides high reliability and reduced maintenance costs.
The overall management of maintenace inspections requires an efficient method that serves all the parties in the organization. At least when it comes to managing turbine parts and inspections, and planning for future maintenance measures.
There are several substantial challenges in parts tracking and inspection management:
1. It is challenging to plan and estimate a budget for future gas turbine maintenance needs cost efficiently. The complete and exact prior history of the turbine has to be known in order to make that estimate.
2. Managing the full history and planning the maintenance are money and time consuming in ways that could easily be avoided.
3. The knowledge of what parts are in stock, in what condition and how much useful life they have left is not always easily at hand.
4. Information on maintenance inspections and available parts is usually not easily accessible to those who need it.
A centralized system that contains information on the maintenance inspections and gas turbine parts as well as related documentation and service bulletins facilitates developing best practices for the safe turbine use. Furthermore, correct and up-to-date information also allows the use of all parts to their maximum useful lives. An efficient method of turbine maintenance management minimizes risks and maximizes what you can get out of your budget.
TMMonitor® (sold under name Lodestar in USA and Canada) provides maintenance managers, site personnel and fleet owners a clear picture of what parts are driving upcoming outage decisions and how to manage gas turbine parts based on remaining life with various units within the fleet.
The Simulator “scenario builder” planning tool allows the operator to assess different unit operational scenarios and gives the operator the ability to make smarter outage decisions.