Introduction
Salt River Project
Power Generation Software
Reliability Analysis Software
Asset Performance Management (APM) Software
This company is using Digital Twin technology to achieve business results. A Digital Twin is a software representation of a physical thing, system or process designed to detect, prevent, and optimize. Digital Twins allow us to predict, prevent and optimize activities by applying software to the challenges of the physical world. Learn more about GE Digital's Digital Twin.
The Salt River Project (SRP) provides generation, transmission & distribution services, as well as metering and billing services to over 1 million customers in the Phoenix metro area. They operate 12 power plants, including coal, nuclear, natural gas, and from renewable sources (hydroelectric, solar, wind, and geothermal).
Challenge
A complex power generation system
SRP was looking to integrate data across multiple power plants for outage management, to optimize maintenance strategies, and to understand where production issues might occur next. The company also wanted to identify opportunities to extend monitoring across their transmission & distribution-critical assets.
Digital Solutions
Asset Performance Management for power generation
SRP chose GE’s Asset Performance Management (APM) solution to consolidate machine sensor data across 11 of their 12 plant locations and over 500 assets. The application of asset performance management for power and utility uses advanced modeling (protected by over 40 patents) to put the normal operating relationships among all relevant parameters into context within power plant assets, such as load, temperatures, pressures, vibration readings and ambient conditions. In real time, the APM software compares actual sensor readings to that particular machine’s normal, predicted values.
Results
By consolidating SRP’s data and applying GE’s robust asset performance management analytics, experience and innovation, SRP has gained a high level of asset, plant, and fleet reliability. SRP is now able to see problems before they happen — toward no unplanned downtime and improving fleet reliability through GE’s Asset Performance Management (APM) solution. With APM, SRP has been able to mitigate unplanned issues and costs while ensuring a continued strategic and planned maintenance process. It has shifted from unplanned outages to planned outages, significantly reducing maintenance costs, enhancing asset life, and improving availability.