Enhancing Drone Technology for Power Plant Maintenance

The work done to keep power plants operating, such as inspections, repairs, and maintenance for every asset that a power plant uses, is known as power plant maintenance.

The lifespan of the assets in energy plants and safety depend on this upkeep.

Read More: Power Plant Management Software

Power plant maintenance is a continuous process that is necessary for all power plants to operate in order to maintain all of the infrastructure and assets in excellent functioning order as well as to guarantee the safety of plant personnel.

Inadequate maintenance protocols may cause essential machinery and equipment to break down, posing a risk to workers and hastening the early breakdown of costly power-generating equipment.

Power plant owners often would rather extend the life of an existing plant rather than create a new one or add to an existing one since building new is quite expensive.

An energy plant’s long-term cost-effectiveness increases with its operating duration, therefore maintenance is essential to extending its useful life.

The term “power plant maintenance” refers to a broad range of tasks necessary to keep a plant operational and in good working order on a daily basis. These tasks include scheduled preventive maintenance, equipment installation, regular reporting, routine inspections, and system integrations and reviews.

This article will discuss how power plants operate, what maintenance involves, how inspections fit into maintenance schedules, and how drones may be used to enhance power plant maintenance.

Workings of Power Plants

What then is a power plant’s purpose?

Power plants transform renewable energy sources like wind, nuclear heat, and coal into electrical power that may be used.

One of the most prevalent kinds of power plants is a thermal power plant, which generates energy by burning fuel.

A thermal power plant produces steam by heating fuel, which turns water into steam. To produce energy, the steam is then sent via a turbine that is attached to an electric generator.

Examples of thermal power plants include the following:

Nuclear power plants generate electricity by heating water to a steamy state using heat from a nuclear reactor.

In coal-fired power plants, water is burned to create steam, which is subsequently used to generate electricity.

There are power plants that use energy from naturally occurring sources in addition to thermal power plants, which use fuel to turn water into steam in order to produce electricity:

Hydroelectric power plants produce electricity by using the energy of flowing water through turbines.

Solar panels are used in solar power plants to transform solar energy into electrical power.

Wind power facilities produce electricity by harnessing the energy of the wind to spin massive fan blades.

Planning for Power Plant Maintenance

For power plants to remain safe and carry on with normal operations, comprehensive, well-maintained maintenance procedures are necessary.

One engineer who is solely focused on maintenance, known as the Power Plant Maintenance Engineer, is frequently involved in power plant maintenance planning.

It would be far too much work for one person to handle all of the maintenance-related tasks at the plant, so the Power Plant Maintenance Engineer is more of a supervisor who ensures that the tasks are being completed in accordance with applicable industry standards.

COMPLEX SYSTEMS FOR MAINTENANCE OF ENERGY PLANT

Maintaining a power plant’s infrastructure is extremely difficult and complex, but it’s also essential for safety.

If a plant problem is not promptly resolved, it may become a potentially fatal situation. However, the staff on site is unable to monitor the condition of every part and resource the plant consumes on a minute-by-minute basis.

To ensure that nothing falls between the cracks, power plants employ automated systems to track the exact state of their equipment in real time.

The two basic systems utilized in power plant maintenance are as follows:

Data acquisition and supervisory control is known as SCADA. SCADA is a sophisticated industrial control system that tracks the state of machinery and plants using computers and network data exchanges. Numerous industrial operations, such as manufacturing, fabrication, refining, and maintenance of power plants, require SCADA.

An automated maintenance management system, or CMMS. Engineers in charge of maintenance employ a CMMS to assist them manage, distribute, and preserve maintenance schedules and reports since there are a lot of different things to keep track of at power plants.

The CMMS and SCADA systems of an energy plant are frequently linked so that on specific days or occasions, work orders for recurring tasks like inspections and preventative maintenance are automatically created.

Information concerning security-related problems, such as defect detection, alarms, and unusual circumstances found within the plant, is also frequently sent via this connection.

Responsibilities of a power plant maintenance engineer

What therefore is needed specifically for power plant maintenance?

Examining the list of things that a Power Plant Maintenance Engineer is in charge of will help you find the answer to this issue.

This is an illustration of a list:

Coordination and integration of SCADA and CMMS

preserving records on the plant’s maintenance practices

Technical assistance for any plant maintenance-related issues

Creating and ensuring that staff follow plans for preventative maintenance

confirming that maintenance and inspections are carried out in accordance with applicable industry standards

serving as the point of contact between management, the people actually conducting the job (such as engineers and other plant staff), and external parties like regulators who need to know about the plant’s maintenance practices

preparing reports and distributing them to plant stakeholders

2 Ways Drones Enhance Maintenance at Power Plants

An essential component of every energy plant’s upkeep is an inspection.

Regular inspections assist guarantee that every piece of equipment utilized in a plant’s operations is in excellent operating order and identify potential flaws before they become serious enough to put workers in risk.

One of the most common—and challenging—types of inspections performed during power plant inspections is an inside inspection of an asset, such as a tank or boiler. As there is no longer a requirement for a person to enter the tight location, using a drone eliminates the risk to human safety at this point.

DRONE USE IN PLACE OF PEOPLE

The inspector’s physical presence can be replaced with drones designed to operate in tight areas, which enables the inspector to gather visual information about the asset’s state remotely without ever having to visit it.

Flyability developed the Elios 1, 2, and 3 specifically for flying in confined locations, such as tanks and boilers, to gather superior visual data suitable for inspection. Because they are enclosed in a cage that permits them to collide with objects without losing altitude, both drones were made to be collision-tolerant.

By enabling safer inspections, enhancing asset access, boosting savings and return on investment, and extending asset lifespans, drones can contribute to better power plant maintenance.

1. Increasing the Safety of Inspections

Using an indoor drone in a small area can assist prevent human inspectors from entering potentially hazardous situations.

This is particularly true with nuclear power plants, because the risk is actual rather than hypothetical.

In order to access the regions of a nuclear power plant that require inspection, inspectors frequently have to expose themselves to radiation.

An inspector can be exposed to up to 250 millirem (2’500 µSv) of radiation in a single examination, lasting one to two minutes. This is approximately 10% of the yearly radiation exposure limit.

Every time an inspection is performed, two individuals are exposed to radiation since a radiation monitor is also required to go with the inspectors.

When a drone is used to gather visual data at a nuclear power plant, inspectors may stay safely outside of irradiated areas like tanks while the drone penetrates them to get visual data on the state of the structures. This eliminates the need for human radiation exposure.

Both the cost and radiation exposure of inspections are decreased when drones are used. Flyability drone technology is used in more than 80% of US nuclear reactors because to advantages like these.

Modern drone models are capable of distant radiation detection, such as the Elios 2 RAD. Because it can help reduce radiation exposure overall, this technology has a lot of promise for the business.

Furthermore, Flyability’s Inspector 4.0 software aids inspectors in pinpointing the precise location of a problem found during an inspection. By using this data, additional inspections and repairs may be made with more focus, cutting down on the amount of time workers must spend within an asset.

2. Increasing Asset Access

Areas that are difficult—or perhaps impossible—for a conventional visual check can be inspected by drones.

Inspectors must frequently stand on scaffolds and use flashlights in small, claustrophobic areas when conducting interior inspections. In addition to putting inspectors in danger, this may still only allow line-of-sight access to certain locations.

Drones can access areas that would normally need a great deal of preparation, documentation, downtime, and the assembly of ropes or scaffolding in order for humans to enter limited spaces.

Drones may retrieve data and provide a more detailed, up-close view of particular, difficult-to-reach areas of an asset. Drones have almost infinite access to the assets for which they are collecting data, whether they are flying in areas too tiny for humans to reach or the very top edge of a cooling tower.

Additionally, enhanced processing, data management, and access are helping inspectors gain a deeper knowledge of the assets they examine. With today’s software, an asset’s overall picture may be more fully formed, regardless of whether data is obtained from various kinds of non-destructive testing (NDT) sensors or from crystal-clear visual data.