Continuous performance improvement is more important than ever in today’s highly competitive markets with global supply and demand chains and progressively informed customers with ever-increasing expectations. Effective strategies for performance improvement in today’s economic climate must be both accurate and comprehensive.
McHale can provide the most accurate instrumentation and detailed models of thermal systems available today. Better measurements and analysis mean better information, decisions, and operation, which is what it takes to successfully compete in the energy marketplace. McHale stands ready to assist you in achieving continuous performance improvement. Contact us to begin improvement of your assets today.
OPTIMIZATION & PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
We help power plant owners & operators that are frustrated with performance issues.
Like many companies owning and operating power plants, your company may have seen a dramatic shift from operations and maintenance excellence to just keeping the plant running with minimal staff. Availability is the major focus and performance is often way down the list of priorities. Many plant owners and operators struggle with performance issues because of time or manpower limitations.
HOW DO YOU IMPROVE PLANT PERFORMANCE?
Regaining control of plant performance is a seven-step process:
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- Audit the facility to find common areas of performance improvement
- Assess plant operation to identify the most significant performance issues
- Estimate the cost to improve each substandard area
- Select the best return for your investment
- Develop an Improvement Plan
- Implement changes or equipment maintenance
- Verify improvement.
Understanding where performance is slipping and developing solutions may improve efficiency by 1% to 5%. Attention to performance would save fuel costs, reduce emissions, improve availability, increase capacity and increase profit.
Knowing your plant’s performance can also detect critical component issues before they lead to a major outage.
Some statements we’ve heard from our clients may sound familiar:
“We know that there are issues with plant or component performance we’d like to improve our plant’s performance but I don’t have the time or manpower to investigate.”
“We’ve run the plant for years without significant problems. How much is this costing me?”
If you are like many power plant owners and operators, just keeping the plant running is what you concentrate on. Performance is at the bottom of the list. As we all know, increased performance leads to increased profit.
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND RESULTS
Evaluation |
Successful Project Foundation |
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- What areas of my plant performance is suffering?
- Which optimization solutions are best suited for your plant?
- What kind of benefits can be expected?
- What increased cost reductions and what increased returns can be expected?
- Where can I spend my dollars to get the greatest return?
- How can I better predict my PPA, Capacity, and Dispatch parameters to better position my assets in the market?
Recommendation |
Confidently Outlining Improvement |
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- Detailed prediction of improvement through proven modeling and analysis.
- Clear return on investment outage repair/improvement targets.
- Operational lineup and setpoint change analysis.
- Fine-tuning and based on valid data and testing.
- Auxiliary power consumption reduction plans.
- Better PPA, Capacity and dispatch models, and prediction tools to improve profitability.
Verify |
Demonstrating Through Testing & Monitoring |
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- Compare actual improvement to those predicted through performance.
- Performance Monitoring and Online Asset Management software
(McHale Suites ™) to track improvement sustainability over time. - PPA, Capacity, and Dispatch prediction curves/models that utilize current performance monitoring information to best position the asset in the market.