Gas Turbine Remote Monitoring

Introduction

Continuous remote monitoring and historical trending for practically limitless operating parameters allow a major turbine OEM to formulate recommendations that assist their gas and steam turbine customers in making informed business maintenance and repair decisions. For gas turbines, consistent quality of planned and predictive maintenance over time is essential to achieving superior equipment availability, performance, and lifetime ownership cost.

Proactive and Responsive Monitoring

Mitsubishi Power Systems offers real-time monitoring and advanced prediction of potential problems through a 24-hour Remote Monitoring Center (RMC) located in Orlando, FL.

All data points received from each unit are streamed into the RMC every one to three seconds, and stored for no less than two years for historical reference, making this system a very dynamic troubleshooting tool. 

Approximately 1,000 to 3,000 data points are monitored for each gas turbine configuration, including all of the auxiliary system information.  Examples of parameters monitored for a standard gas turbine unit include:

• Ambient Conditions
• Hot Gas Path Conditions
• Combustor Dynamics (CPFM)
• Control System Features
• Vibration Indications
• Valve Demand, Position and Feedback Signals
• Auxiliary System Parameters
• Alarm Indications and Set Points

While most of their competitors will do a batch summary of the information once or twice per day, Mitsubishi receives continuous data stream of thousands of points of data per second in real time.  All of this data comes back to their OSISoft PI System in the Orlando monitoring facility where they use Exele TopView Alarm Management Software to congregate the alarms from every monitored installation, globally.  Exele TopView provides audible, visual and even email alarm message notification to the RMC Staff.  Any unexpected deviations alert the RMC staff to take immediate action.

Alarm Management and Notification

About a year ago RMC looked to find an alarm management package that could serve their needs. "The alarm management package that we had been using for years was no longer supported by the manufacturer" said Daryl Massey, Manager of the Remote Monitoring Center.  "In addition, we had outgrown the package as we continued to add to the number of monitoring points so we ran into more and more issues." They choose Exele TopView Alarm Management and Notification Software.  "TopView had a lot of benefits.  It's very flexible, it offers several notification options and the support has been great", said Massey. 

Exele TopView interfaces directly with the OSIsoft PI system and is currently monitoring 30,000 alarm tags and many more data tags. With so many potential alarms, one issue that the RMC Staff had to deal with is redundant or repeating alarms.  These are situations where an alarm condition has been noted and corrective action is in the works, or where there is a defective sensor causing the alarm.  So Massey and his technical staff requested that Exele Information Systems add a 'Snooze' feature to TopView which would allow the operator to disable an alarm for a period of time while corrective action is being implemented.  "One of the best things about switching to TopView has been the ability to get updates and enhancements" said Massey.  "We had spoken to Exele about the nuisance alarm situation and they explained the 'Snooze' approach and we had the feature available to us in a new release shortly after".

Summary

Having the tools to successfully monitor abnormal gas turbine conditions, notify the appropriate personnel, and empower them to respond accordingly, can save a tremendous amount of time and money. Exele TopView's breadth of features and ease of use provides a powerful and versatile solution that has been proven successful across many industries including multiple remote monitoring centers.