How can you improve your asset management in power engineering?

This would also provide you with insights to compare your present condition with current global trends and best practices in the industry.

In my experience, a good history of logs is necessary to understand how the assets have been performing, in terms of overload or underload. In other words, how it has been exploited from the first day of operation until today.

Modern protective relays are hardened computers that can be programmed to perform advanced condition monitoring functions. Take a generator protection relay as an example… it has been shown it can accurately determine the stator winding capacitance on a regular basis, providing historical data. This can be used in turn to predict when maintenance should be performed.

Assessing the current situation is the first important step to improve asset management - it gives insight direction to carry out the next steps towards improving processes.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) also plays a vital role in providing guidelines and standards for most electrical procedures and installation.

This segment is novel in the field as after evolution of AI, collecting lots and lots of data and feeding to analyzer would drastically affect maintenance schedules and reliability of power systems. Also, it can optimize the operation for utmost efficiency also.

The more granular data we can extract for each site and its comprising components, the more analysis we can do. For instance, getting meter and inverter generation data for every half hour period using dataloggers which are connected to the cloud can help identify any issues related to energy producing assets.

With the availability of numerous analytical tools and data, it has become imperative for industries and organisations to leverage on this plethora of information to make more informed decisions and predictions about various processes and procedures in the industry. This would aid in improvement and optimization of processes and also save time, energy and other resources.

Although an initial lifecycle analysis is usually completed before the actual construction of a site takes place, we cannot rely on initial estimated for ROI or carbon offsets. This is because factors like government policies, energy prices, O&M costs, etc. are bound to change over the average lifespan of any renewable energy site.

Engaging stakeholders and team members ensures that both parties fully understand what the business needs per time and hence appropriately channel their resources and efforts in achieving short term, mid term and long term organizational goals. It also assists in providing an effective feedback system such that team members can freely communicate challenges and risks faced while executing their duties. This aids in overall improvement of mood among team members and provides a conducive work environment. This in turn creates room for maximum growth, development and achievement of organisational goals.

Once you have your assets accounted for, and their condition ascertained, you're in a position to implement whatever strategy you (or your organisation) deems to be the best in the circumstances. You're now in a position to look to the future, and what you need to think about when taking on new assets, whether they be replacement, refurb or capital investment. To do this you'll need to have a grasp of current test techniques and requirements for each item of equipment that you are responsible for. Capital infrastructure items often have expected service lives extending into multiple decades, and it's likely that any new equipment will be in service long after the asset manager that originally accepted it into service has retired.

Visit the cemeteries: Often the best indicators of what was going wrong in the assets management strategy are the back stories, the discarded assets, the previous incident logs statistics and the purchase orders. Consider it as a forensic audit and a look into the past practices to build for a better, more efficient approach. With the particularities of each system, the ground is often your best source of data.

One thing I have found helpful is good maintenance culture. An optimum use of Power Engineering (PE) tools according to Original Equipment Manufacturer and industrial recommended standards (like applicable ISO regulation), and maintenance of PE devices after use, reduces the probability of device replacement and associated cost. Thus, asset management problems increase with decrease in equipments or components maintenance. Power System components ratings are slightly higher than specified on the name plate. Careful operation of equipment in an appropriate conditions and within the rated limits is very important. Dispite the pressure in the working environment, cultivating and implementating good maintenance culture is unparallel.