Eliminating Nuisance Alarms at Dynegy
When Dynegy's flagship Baldwin Energy Complex was upgraded to Emerson Ovation control systems in 2001 to 2003, alarm management suddenly became a critical issue. Nuisance alarms were overwhelming the plant's existing and very traditional printer-and-CRT control-room monitoring, making it unnecessarily difficult for operators and plant management to clearly and quickly identify alarms that were indicative of real problems, through all that noise.
Dynegy's Joseph Namberhaus, Director of Operations at Midwest Fleet Operations, gave a detailed look at how Dynegy and their partner applied real-time alarm and event visualization to the problem, and how, with comprehensive alarm and event analysis they were able to get a clear look at their alarm condition situation. They were able to identify problems and take the necessary steps to eliminate nearly all of those nuisance alarms.
The Strength of Shared Information
Excelon Corporation is the largest nuclear operator in the United States. The parent of ComEd continues to expand the use of Matrikon ProcessNet software across their three sites. The Engineering Workstation System (EWS) was first implemented in early 2003, and continues to provide real benefit to Exelon. EWS provides a high-level overview of Excelon's generation status. Operators and managers can get snapshots of individual plant work order and change management systems. Steve Hunsader, Excelon's Program Manager, says Exelon is proud of the Clinton nuclear site's development of EWS to enable the Emergency Operations Facility and local Engineering to identify equipment reliability issues in time to take action before the plant's performance is significantly degraded. Clinton received a "Strength" award from an independent regulatory board, illustrating that the system is a strong, pacesetting advantage for Exelon's operations.
