Reliability Assessment in Asset Management—An Utility Perspective

Many utilities are facing a challenge to stay in business as their assets are aging, and many new regulations are being introduced. These utilities are looking for the means to improve the reliability and availability of their assets, while wisely spending their limited resources. Therefore, it is very important for the utilities to understand how their assets will perform in the future, and establish priorities for maintenance and replacements. Many reliability efforts focus on static analyses methods, which result in linear projections of failure probability. A more powerful approach is to characterize each equipment, system and unit using complex statistical modelling and then perform Monte Carlo simulations to provide dynamic reliability and maintainability analyses. There is a vast amount of failure data available for equipment in the form of MTBF and Failure Rate. However, there is insufficient Weibull data to perform the Dynamic Reliability Process for Power Plant equipment. Alstom has started using the data they collected from various equipment to establish a relationship between the MTBF and the Weibull parameters for Power Plant Equipment. This paper describes Alstom’s effort in developing this relationship.