Tracking your plant's performance measures against a predetermined standard, either a peer group benchmark or an industry index, is a critical component in understanding the performance of your plant and utilised for continuous improvement. The primary objective of measuring your plant's maintenance, reliability and generating KPIs is to find ways to reduce both the frequency of outages and the duration of these outages. If outages can be kept at a level consistent with minimum generation costs and load management objectives, then your power plant will be performing at an optimal level - balancing both costs and revenue.
As part of the regulatory activities surrounding the Power Generation industry there are several databases and indices committed to providing benchmarks around performance and production. Although you can capture almost any performance indicator you wish, there are some key metrics that will give you the best idea of how well your site is performing relative to industry standards like Equivalent Availability Factor (EAF), Net Capacity Factor (NCF), Forced Outage Rate (FOR) and Equivalent Forced Outage Factor (EFOF) to mention a few.
AGL currently operates in excess of 10,000 MW of generation and has implemented OSIsoft's PI System and RtDuet across their Generation sites, standardising the calculation and analysis of all plant & equipment Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) to improve asset performance, reliability and optimise maintenance expenditure and reporting. These KPI's are in accordance with the IEEE 762 and NERC-GADS Standards."
Speaker
Mark Faith
Mark Faith is the Engineer for Reliability and Performance Systems for AGL and has worked in the power generation industry for the last 26 years. He is also the technical owner of the PI System. When not on the back of a motorbike or trying to plumb his homebrew setup into PI, Mark's focus is in realising operational excellence at AGL through the use of the PI System and its partners. AGL's power generation fleet spans the eastern seaboard of Australia and is quite diverse with coal, gas, wind, solar and hydroelectric generation. As AGL's Engineer for Reliability and Performance systems, Mark is responsible for implementing consistent tools and reporting to improve asset reliability, availability and increase overall Operational Excellence at Australia's largest and leading power company. AGL has invested in an Enterprise Agreement with OSIsoft and heavily utilizes the PI System and its partners to achieve these key initiatives.