Home Industries Case Studies

Nuclear Power Plant Avoids a $3 Million Power Penalty and Manpower Hit Problem: Following an outage, a circulating water pump at a nuclear power plant displayed much higher vibration amplitudes than before it. Taking the pump offline for repairs would cost the plant millions, but manually monitoring it as it ran to failure would stretch manpower beyond it limits. Solution: Azima's remote monitoring system enabled the plant to effortlessly collect data every two hours without human interaction, all the while keeping the pump running. Result: The plant was able to run the circulating water pump until winter, when it was taken offlinefor repairs without a $3 million power penalty. Remote monitoring also kept the maintenance staff from having to dedicate hundreds of hours to manually collecting data. The Story: It was the hottest time of the year when a major nuclear power plant unknowingly brought a defective circulating water pump online after an outage. Azima's remote monitoring and diagnostic system immediately detected that the vibration amplitude of the pump was four times higher than it was before the outage. "Our analysis of the data showed that the pump had been assembled incorrectly and the bottom bearing was degrading," said Azima's Vice President of Diagnostic Services Nelson Baxter. Taking the pump offline for repairs was not an option, as it would take at least two weeks to complete. "It was August. There was no way that we could operate without all four of our pumps in operation. The power penalty would have been huge," said the PdM team leader. "We'd be looking at a downtime loss of well over $3 million." Instead, the plant relied on Azima to run an around-the-clock monitoring program. Azima's remote monitoring system began collecting data every two hours and was set to notify the plant if the vibration levels rose to a critical level. "Without Azima's remote monitoring capabilities, we would have had to dedicate hundreds of manpower hours to that one pump," said the PdM team leader. "Someone would have had to manually collect data several times a day, including weekends and holidays. We certainly didn't have that kind of manpower available." With Azima as its virtual babysitter, the pump continued to run for several months. It was December when the vibration levels indicated an imminent failure. "At that point it was much colder so the plant could operate with three pumps instead of four," said Mr. Baxter. "They took the circ water pump offline for repairs and got it back online with no consequential downtime."