C6: Asset Management

Presentations are:

Planning an Equipment Modernization Post-Pandemic, presented by Karen Graham, HDR

Hydropower Fleet Intelligence: An Overview of Smart Maintenance Technologies for Hydropower, presented by Pradeep Ramuhalli, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

A Risk-Informed Asset Management Plan Development for a Hydro-Power Facility, presented by E. Onur Tastan, Geosyntec Consultants Inc.

Details about each presentation and the speakers are below:

Planning an Equipment Modernization Post-Pandemic, presented by Karen Graham, HDR

Developing a realistic overall project schedule for an upcoming hydroelectric equipment modernization is critical to project success. We are in a post-pandemic environment where engineering, solicitation, procurement, and manufacturing has major impacts on delivering a project on time and within an established budget.

The purpose of this presentation is to facilitate discussions with engineering and equipment partners to allow owners to understand the planning horizon for soliciting, procuring, and installing replacement equipment.


Hydropower Fleet Intelligence: An Overview of Smart Maintenance Technologies for Hydropower, presented by Pradeep Ramuhalli, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Emerging challenges, such as the increase in renewable sources of electrical generation and aging facilities, are expected to challenge the ability of hydropower to reliably support its multiple missions (electrical generation, environmental, recreation, etc.). Digitalization technologies are increasingly being considered to address these challenges, with smart operations and maintenance technologies applied to increase availability and reliability and reduce operations and maintenance (O&M) costs.

The Hydropower Fleet Intelligence (HFI) project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), is developing multiple data-driven methodologies, along with software tools, for smart O&M. Techniques are being developed for estimating the reliability of assets in typical conventional and pumped storage hydropower plants, and for predicting the remaining service life of assets. Techniques are also being developed for related data analysis to identify different operating modes, and for improving data reliability. The approaches being developed leverage historical operations and maintenance data to quantify asset condition and assess reliability metrics such as the mean time between failures. Time dependent influence coefficients may also be determined using these quantities and others such as the number of start-stops, ramping, condensing, speed-no-load, generation, and pumping events. Such influence coefficients can be used for forecasting the fraction of components whose reliability is impacted by an increase in variable dispatch operations. Other algorithms utilize condition monitoring data to determine anomalous conditions and predict the time to failure of an asset. In combination with other models, such algorithms may be used to determine and adjust maintenance schedules to avoid forced outages while minimizing time-based maintenance activities. Cost models developed in this work also enable the assessment of the cost impact of variable dispatch operations as well as the lifecycle costs of assets for determining optimal replacement timing.

The research effort is developing a dashboard application for integrating and visualizing data from different sources within a facility, and demonstrate the potential of algorithms and analytics solutions for smart O&M. The expected outcome is the use of data at the unit, plant and national fleet wide scale to facilitate cost-effective asset management amid evolving and challenging hydro power operational needs. The presentation will provide an overview of the various algorithms developed to date, along with a demonstration of the data explorer application and dashboards.


A Risk-Informed Asset Management Plan Development for a Hydro-Power Facility, presented by E. Onur Tastan, Geosyntec Consultants Inc.

Approximately 50% or more of the dams in the U.S. are 50 years or older. Maintenance and timely repairs on these dams ensure public safety and allow the public to continue benefiting from these facilities. Particularly for hydropower dams, periodic maintenance is essential to prolong the life of the facilities and provide continuous low-carbon energy.

Maintenance of hydropower facilities is planned and conducted either in accordance with recommendations from Part 12D inspections and FERC orders and/or through asset management plans prepared by the operators. When the number of components to maintain/repair is high, establishing a basis for prioritization of components can be challenging and subjective. In this study, a risk-informed asset-management process has been implemented for a hydropower facility in Georgia. The process considers what triggers the risk (normal pool vs design pool or seismic loads), condition assessment, and economical/cost aspects. The process involves an evaluation based on existing data, inspection reports, site interviews, O&M records, and calculation packages; and does not require additional analyses.

The product of this process is a prioritized list of operation and maintenance (O&M) and repair items with anticipated costs more than $10,000, used to identify and plan for mid- to long-term action items for the dam and its infrastructure. The list has two components: (a) recommended repairs as part of Part 12D inspections and FERC orders, i.e., short term items; and (b) operational items influencing power generation, i.e., long term items.