In a geothermal power plant the working fluid used to produce electricity is often wet steam composed of corrosives chemicals. In this situation, more frequent maintenance of the equipment is required. By constructing an overview for maintenance in geothermal power plants and how it can be done with minimum power outages and cost, the geothermal energy can be made more competitive in comparison to other energy resources. This work is constructed as a part of a project, which has the aim of mapping the maintenance management system at the Hellisheiði geothermal power plant in Iceland. The object of the project is to establish Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) program for Hellisheiði power plant that can be utilized to establish efficient maintenance management procedures. The focus of this paper is to examine the steam turbines, which have been defined as one of the main subsystems of the power plant at Hellisheiði. A close look will be taken at the maintenance needed for the steam turbines by studying for example which parts break down and how frequently they fail. The local ability of the staff to repair or construct turbine parts on-site is explored. The paper explores how the maintenance and condition monitoring is carried out today and what can be improved in order to reduce cost. The data collected is analyzed using Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) in order to get an overview of the system and to help organizing maintenance and condition monitoring of the power plant in the future. Furthermore, the paper presents an overview of currently employed maintenance methods at Hellisheiði power plant, the domestic ability for maintaining and repairing steam turbines and the power plant’s need for repairs. The results show that the need for maintenance of the geothermal steam turbines at Hellisheiði power plant is high and that on-site maintenance and repairs can decrease the cost.
Even though the Icelandic public relies greatly on geothermal power, to date, intensive maintenance procedures on the geothermal turbines have been conducted by foreign contractors. Such repairs are very time consuming, risky, expensive and leak capital out of the country. This has been discussed greatly within the industry and plans have been made on how the power companies, along with domestic machine shops can address this problem. However, in spring 2013 a turbine failure was observed in a routine quadrennial check at the Nesjavellir geothermal power plant. Corrosion products where found on the last set of the labyrinth packing and the rotor had been worn down approximately 8 mm radius. The backup rotor was also in a non-operational state. The unexpected downtime in power production had to be minimized in order to fulfill contracts. Because of time constraints, foreign service companies were not considered to be feasible due to their waiting queues and the time required for shipping overseas. This scenario initiated collaboration between the power company and domestic machine shops to manufacture spare parts and conduct the overall repair on site. This was due to several reasons such as; currency exchange rate, machines and know-how at the machine shops had improved over the last decade and the fact that the power company was ready to pay for the development cost. This paper presents the problem, how it was solved collaboratively domestically in only a fraction of time that conventional procedures would have taken. The paper investigates the causes of the turbine failure and provides a description the current state of turbine repair facilities in Iceland.
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