Between the Assets and Past the Fence

Power plants have largely optimized individual assets.

The next opportunity lies in how assets, resources, and operating decisions work together.

Power producers are experts at optimizing equipment.

Decades of advancement in engineering and operating practices have improved the performance of gas turbines, pumps, steam systems and other critical assets.

Operators can measure unit-level performance in […] The post Between the Assets and Past the Fence appeared first on POWER Magazine .

Search Sign In Home O&M Between the Assets and Past the Fence O&M Between the Assets and Past the Fence Contributed Content Power plants have largely optimized individual assets.

The next opportunity lies in how assets, resources, and operating decisions work together.

Power producers are experts at optimizing equipment.

Decades of advancement in engineering and operating practices have improved the performance of gas turbines, pumps, steam systems and other critical assets.

Operators can measure unit-level performance in extraordinary detail and continuously improve.

However, there is a limit to what asset-by-asset optimization has limits.

Even a plant where every major piece of equipment is performing exactly as intended can still be leaving value on the table because the best operating point for an individual asset may not be the best operating point for the system.

Power producers looking for the next significant leap in operational excellence won’t find it by continuing to optimize their individual assets.

They will find it by considering their interactions and by looking beyond individual assets to the broader decisions that shape plant performance, including resource planning, fuel decisions, maintenance, and operational dispatch.

Traditional optimization methods draw a boundary around the variables to be changed and treat externalities as fixed boundary conditions.

However, in an integrated plant, many of those boundary conditions are not truly fixed.

Search Sign In Home O&M Between the Assets and Past the Fence O&M Between the Assets and Past the Fence Contributed Content Power plants have largely optimized individual assets.

The next opportunity lies in how assets, resources, and operating decisions work together.

Power producers are experts at optimizing equipment.

Decades of advancement in engineering and operating practices have improved the performance of gas turbines, pumps, steam systems and other critical assets.

Operators can measure unit-level performance in extraordinary detail and continuously improve.

However, there is a limit to what asset-by-asset optimization has limits.

Even a plant where every major piece of equipment is performing exactly as intended can still be leaving value on the table because the best operating point for an individual asset may not be the best operating point for the system.

Power producers looking for the next significant leap in operational excellence won’t find it by continuing to optimize their individual assets.

They will find it by considering their interactions and by looking beyond individual assets to the broader decisions that shape plant performance, including resource planning, fuel decisions, maintenance, and operational dispatch.

Traditional optimization methods draw a boundary around the variables to be changed and treat externalities as fixed boundary conditions.

However, in an integrated plant, many of those boundary conditions are not truly fixed.

Consider a plant with multiple gas turbines and a shared steam infrastructure.

At the unit level, operators may aim to minimize the heat rate of each turbine.

At face value, this makes perfect sense, but the reality is that these units do not operate independently: load distribution affects the shared steam system and other plant equipment.

Fuel requirements, auxiliary loads, maintenance availability and dispatch commitments could all be at play.