Investigations for RCM Implementation in Thermal Power Plant

This book presents the investigations for implementing Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) technique in thermal power plant. RCM is used to develop maintenance strategies and criteria with certain objectives of preserving operational capability of equipments and thus enhancing availability of the system. As far as the generating plants in power sector are concerned, the complex designs, diversity of equipments and irregular increase of load has led to increase in forced outages. To make provision for higher degree of availability of generating plants, improved maintenance plan needs to be introduced. Keeping this in view, RCM has been investigated as a method of working in thermal power plant. This research work has been carried out based on the seven step criteria of RCM. The improvements in availability, reliability and generation of extra revenue are the compelling reasons for the plant personnel and maintenance department to adopt RCM as a method of working over the conventional practice of corrective maintenance. Based on the recommended preventive measures, fault tolerance can be provided at design stage for the plants to be installed in near future .