Wireless monitoring making inroads

• Published in: Power 2005-06, Vol.149 (5), p.45
• Main Author: Wicker, Ken
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Electricity distribution; Electricity generation; Electronic monitoring; Engineers; Infrastructure; Internet; Maintenance management; Power plants; Resource recovery; Sensors; Wireless access points; Wireless networks
• ISSN: 0032-5929; 1936-7791

Today's competitive electricity markets are pressing operators of power plants to simultaneously cut spending on maintenance and reduce the risk of equipment failures that could cause unplanned downtime. To meet this challenge, many plants are implementing various condition-based maintenance (CBM) programs that employ wireless technologies. The key is getting the right data to the right person at the right time. Wireless technologies that work well in the plant environment include cell phones, paging systems, two-way radio systems, dose management and tracking systems, and operator logs. What's driving wireless technologies' infiltration of "wired" power plants is their ability to improve the efficiency and lower the cost of electricity generation. Covanta Energy Corp, one of the largest waste-to-energy companies in the US, has installed wireless devices at its 48-MW Haverhill Resource Recovery Facility north of Boston to enhance its condition-based maintenance efforts. The devices now enable Covanta to monitor six key fans (two induced-draft, two forced-draft, and two for overfire air) whose hard-to-reach locations made monitoring by cable prohibitively expensive.