USACE’s Remote Monitoring System (RMS) Helps Efficient Power Production
Grant Sattler
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The RMS is designed to back up MoE plant operators by watching a series of key parameters of power plant performance. Pictured here, Iraqi’s Iskandariyah thermal power plant, located on Forward Operating Base Iskan, provides more than 60 percent of Iraq’s electricity and nearly all of Baghdad’s. (U.S. Army photo by SGT Ben Brody, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs.) |
Obtaining the greatest efficiency and ensuring full service life of Iraq’s combustion gas turbine power generation plants is the goal of a new RMS keeping watch on key indicators of the plant’s performance. Monitoring the fleet of gas turbine power generation plants throughout Iraq from a central location is now possible thanks to an Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund-provided project managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).
Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity (MoE) has increased the total megawatts produced on the electrical power grid as quickly as possible by building new gas turbine power generation plants. Construction of these plants is typically years faster than building thermal power generation plants with extensive boiler and steam turbine systems, which take much longer to manufacture and construct. However, combustion gas turbine engines — essentially like those propelling large commercial aircraft — are more susceptible to fuel quality, ambient temperatures, and dirty conditions, which make them harder to control and can also reduce their power output and cause greater wear.
The facility gives the MoE the ability to watch essential parameters and react before a problem that local plant operators may not notice gets to a critical level. |
The RMS is designed to back up MoE plant operators by watching a series of key parameters of power plant performance. The RMS center will also capture and store this data for historical records of plant performance and data related to plant trips and failures. “All the power plants are controlled locally,” said Jeff Larkin, Parsons Brinckerhoff Program Director for the operations and maintenance (O&M) contract in electricity for the USACE Gulf Region Division (GRD), “but turbine specialists monitoring through RMS can contact plants via telephone if they see readings going off.”
The system developed by Turbine Technology Services Corp. is not quite real time — information is sent by satellite from 12 plants (once fully commissioned) to a central RMS facility collocated at one of the MoE power plants. From there, turbine specialists can watch, download, and store data for trend analysis to forecast maintenance requirements and look for greater operational efficiencies. Installation began in September 2006.
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USACE Soldiers and civilian personnel are helping Iraqis to improve capacity to the deteriorated electrical power grid of that nation. In Baiji, Iraq, efforts continue to construct new facilities and rehabilitate existing ones to provide the people of Iraq with an adequate supply of stable electrical power. (U.S. Army photo by Thomas O’Hara.) |
“Turbine specialists monitoring RMS will be key players in keeping plants operating efficiently,” said Robin Pratt, Generation Program Director. The facility gives the MoE the ability to watch essential parameters and react before a problem that local plant operators may not notice gets to a critical level. This facility can also give the MoE the opportunity to maximize the use of its specialists’ skills and experience to monitor and advise operation staff in real time across many plant locations when previously these specialists have only been able to provide real time advice at the one plant where they are located.
Among the readings observed by the RMS are temperatures for wheel space, bearing metal, generator and exhaust, fuel flow, vibration, lubricating oil, revolutions per minute, megawatts produced, and frequency.
“RMS is set up internally for the MoE,” Larkin said. In the United States, the monitoring role is typically provided by the equipment manufacturer through an O&M-type contract. Setting up RMS at one of the plants gives the MoE complete ownership, relying on its own specialists rather than an O&M contractor outside of the country. Additionally, the Director Generals can dial up a Web site and access a summary of plant performance and even check turbine power production unit by unit from home or a hotel room.
RMS will be part of a huge cultural shift to go to preventive, periodic maintenance away from the failure maintenance practiced under the past regime. |
RMS gives technicians the ability to monitor plant performance over long periods of time, see what deteriorates, and determine when maintenance needs to be done before critical failure. This also enables wear rates to be predicted and long lead parts to be ordered in good time to enable best value, rather than make emergency procurements. In that way, RMS will be part of a huge cultural shift to go to preventive, periodic maintenance away from the failure maintenance practiced under the past regime.
Larkin said the MoE is embracing the latest technologies it has been starved of the last 12 years because of international sanctions. He estimates that in 2 years the MoE should be fully up to speed with industry standards.
For more details, e-mail CEGRD.PAO@usace.army.mil. For more information on USACE in Iraq, visit www.grd.usace.army.mil.
GRANT SATTLER is a Public Affairs Specialist with the GRD, USACE, Iraq. He holds a B.A. in mass communications from Southern Nazarene University and an M.A. in communications from the University of Oklahoma.
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