Case Study

Condition Monitoring with advanced capabilities
Background
  • The Ferndale generating plant is one of six combined cycle-based power plants owned by Puget Sound Energy (PSE).
  • PSE Incorporates an AVEVAT™ PI System™ at the plant as the process historian.
  • The 270 MW plant is based a 2-2-1 combined cycle; where two dual-fuel General Electric PG7111EA gas turbine generator trains supply heat to two heat recovery steam generator triple pressure units with duct firingcapability.
Solution
  • PSE chose Brüel & Kjær Vibro’s VC-8000/SETPOINT solution as a coste effective solution with advanced capabilities to replace their obsolete legacy system.
  • The SETPOINT solution eliminated the need for separate, special vibration databases due to it’s ability to integreate vibration data including current values, alarm status, and trends into their existing AVEVA™ PI System.
  • PSE was able to continuously backup data, even if the loca network went down, with the pre-installed SD card on the VC-8000.
Challenge
  • The original machine protection system became obsolete and no longer supported by the legacy supplier.
  • The original MPS did not have online condition monitoring capabilities onsite visits, followed by post-processing of event data, is costly and time-consuming.
  • Installing a condition monitoring system by the legacy MPS supplier is also expensive and requires maintenance and IT Infrastructure which was limited.
Results
  • The SD card function was immediately helpful to ensure data wasn’t lose while the initial connection to the AVEVA™ PI System™™™ was created.
  • PSE benefited from correlating process and vibration data to Improve the reliability of fault analysis and improving root-cause analysis results.
  • The first diagnostic evaluation performed using the SETPOINTE solution detected an imbalance occurred on a bearing of one of the two 7EA gas turbines.
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Conclusion
  • PSE required a cost-effective machine vibration condition monitoring system with advanced capabilities.
  • MThe SETPOINT solution provided a modern, cost-efficient alternative to their legacy system and was more economical than upgrading with their legacy supplier.