Scling...
What did you learn from the systems History Recorder?
Regards, Phil Corso

 

scling, Your site is a lost cause, and the direction you are headed in is going to take years and cause lots of grief. Most of my prior response is intended for people trying to avoid the situation you faced. And when considering a PMS there will be lots of problems if you let others tell you how your plant is going to or will be configured and operated.

This is what happens when a plant grows and is expanded without coordination.

A plant coordination study needs to be done to identify and improve or resolve issues before you even think about buying a PMS. And any time the plant is expanded another coordination study needs to be done. It’s not a one-time thing, as you have discovered.

As the plant coordination study is being finished and its recommendations implemented that’s the time that all the stakeholders need to decide how the plant needs to be operated, resulting in a system description with requirements written and used as the basis for PMS suppliers to bid on. GET REFERENCES FROM THE SUPPLIERS PROVIDING BIDS/PROPOSALS AND CONTACT PLANTS WHO HAVE PURCHASED PMSs TO GET THEIR OPERATING EXPERIENCE AND OPINIONS OF THE EQUIPMENT, COMMISSIONING AND AFTER-INSTALLATION SUPPORT. THIS IS NOT EASY CONTACTING PEOPLE FOR INFORMATION BUT IF YOU DO YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY. And if you don’t, you probably will be sorry.

In the meantime, invest in operator training—good, quality operator training. Make sure the operations managers attend the training also. This will do several things. It will prove to the operators that the company wants to make them better employees. At the company’s expense. It will help to get all the operations staff to a common level and thereby improve plant reliability and availability. It will also probably save future incidents from resulting in black-outs during the plant coordination study and the PMS vetting and purchase process. It will also help the operators to understand if the new PMS works properly during commissioning, how to describe issues that WILL occur during and after commissioning and how to recognize and prevent similar situations now and in the future.

Automation can be a very good thing, if implemented properly. Power generation is so poorly understood by so many precisely because a lot of it has been automated over decades, and not without a few problems along the way. Programmers are often too smart and don’t recognize when they’re in over their heads. (This is probably one of the reasons the OEM isn’t really keen on taking this PMS assignment, and we won’t discuss some of the others here.)

Personally I have seen some really poor PMSs, some not too bad ones and almost no good ones. And I’ve seen some egos ruin some potentially good ones, mostly because management doesn’t understand power generation fundamentals and won’t listen to reason or experience.

Best of luck. You’ve a long road ahead of you, just be sure you’re writing the specification and checking references before you award the contract for the PMS.

And expect a few hiccups during and even after commissioning. Testing after commissioning will be crucial—be sure the site is involved in writing the test plan and that clear instructions and performance targets are written into the test plan. (Each test should have a purpose and a successful result identified and the test results need to be checked against the expectations and changes made if necessary.)

Training is often a lot less expensive and time-consuming, and can prevent and even properly identify potential problems. If the users of automation know what the automation does they are better operators when there are problems. A PMS is not inexpensive, and the chances of getting a good one aren’t very good unless the owners/operators write the specifications and know if it works correctly or not.