Owned by Guangdong Zhuhai Power Station Co Ltd, the Zhuhai power plant is a two-unit 600-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power plant located in Guangdong Province, China. It produces around 3.9 billion kWh of electricity annually which meets the energy demand of Jinwan District Gaolan Port Economic Zone, Zhuhai city.
Predictive maintenance improves reliability using data insights and expertise
The desulfurization plant was facing unplanned downtimes which meant that the city of Zhuhai experienced power interruptions due to the failure of some of the plant’s non-ABB motors and they were looking for solutions that would improve the availability and reliability of the rotating equipment. Zhuhai Power Plant was able to enhance its operations and increase its uptime with the help of digital solutions that deliver data insights and expertise through ABB Ability™ Condition Monitoring for powertrains, enabled by the ABB Ability™ Smart Sensor.
The ABB Ability™ Condition Monitoring services offered them a personalized approach to improve their equipment uptime, safety, and efficiency by allowing them to detect faults in advance.
Smart Sensors were installed on 34 critical non-ABB motors of the pumps, fans, and mixers at the Zhuhai power plant. These sensors measured key parameters from the surface of the equipment, enabling the customer to monitor operational variables and health indicators. This includes, for example, availability, number of starts, running conditions, temperature, current, vibration, and fault events.
The collected data is analyzed to provide intelligent insights to the plant operators for better management of their pumps, fans, and mixers that allow them to keep operations running safely, reliably, and cost-effectively.
The domain expertise of ABB is critical in delivering this information, allowing Zhuhai Power Plant to make decisions about which motors to focus their attention on to enhance their availability.
The uptime has significantly increased since the plant started using ABB’s Condition Monitoring services. The customer can now analyze the data and then make an informed decision, avoiding unplanned downtime. This has improved the overall reliability of their applications running in the plant, increased production output, and saved costs. As an added benefit, they were also able to increase their employee’s safety with the help of remote monitoring. The success of this technical improvement was published in the Journal of “China Plant Engineering” in 2019.
ABB Ability™ Condition Monitoring services enable easy access to data from equipment in locations that may be difficult or dangerous to reach. Condition monitoring enables users to remotely monitor the health of their motors and generators, detect early signs of potential problems and plan maintenance activities to avoid unplanned downtime.
