The Czech Republic-based energy company Sev.en Group’s subsidiary Teplarna Kladno s.r.o is one of the major producers of thermal and electrical energy and supplier of heat and electricity to Kladno households and industrial companies. In September 2022, Teplarna selected ABB to run a project to implement Ability™ AssetInsight™ and ABB Ability™ Smart Sensors at its thermal power plant in Kladno, one of the largest cities in the Bohemian region.
Teplarna is responsible for ensuring the stability of the Czech grid system by providing grid support services and act as a backup power source for Prague’s Metropolitan Area during blackouts.
“Our longstanding relationship encouraged us to collaborate and bring ABB on board for the digitalization of our Asset Performance Management (APM) program at Kladno plant,” said Milan Slapnička, Asset Administration Manager at Teplarna Kladno. “ABB’s domain expertise in industrial solutions coupled with integrated digital solutions such as APM will enable us to optimize plant operations and reduce downtime.”
Ensuring deeper visibility on plant equipment
ABB signed the agreement for the project in September 2022 and completed the execution phase in April 2023. “Over the last few months, we have successfully built the condition monitoring infrastructure for the project. It has already started and will run for a year,” said Radek Cabejšek, Sales Manager Czech Republic at ABB Energy Industries.
ABB Ability™ AssetInsight™ and ABB Ability™ Smart Sensors for rotating equipment deployed through a Bluetooth network are the core of the solution. The solution provides overview of the health of the rotating assets in a user-friendly dashboard, providing proactive notifications of asset health degradation. The end user can dig into the details of any piece of equipment, such as Low Voltage Motors, Centrifugal Pumps, Radial Blowers, perform a detailed analysis, and take action in the case of unhealthy status.
“We engaged with the customer from an early stage and suggested connecting the ABB AssetInsight™ solution to our Symphony® Plus Historian control system that will enable Teplarna to make the best out of our technologies already installed at their site,” Radek Cabejšek added.
The digital integration of the ABB AssetInsight™ solution and the pre-installed Symphony® Plus Historian will give a complete view of the status of the plant equipment and optimize plant operations, while helping to lower maintenance costs and unplanned downtime.
Assured benefits from digital integration
In an era where operators are facing a significant demographic change in the workforce, ABB AssetInsight™ will play an important role, providing the customer with remote monitoring, asset intelligence and data insights to enable reliability operations.
In addition, the system will also help the detection of equipment failure/downtime in advance, analyzing the fleet of assets and supporting the engineer solving the problem when the condition is indicated as abnormal, by visualizing the relevant analysis data in user friendly dashboards. Finally, it will also support the full integration with existing customer information systems and the scheduling of service, including equipment replacement.
“We are glad to partner with Teplarna Kladno and to support their digitalization journey as a trusted digitalally,” Radek Cabejšek concluded.
