Reliability Assessment of Large Diesel Generator Fleet
40 Sylvan Road
Waltham
MA
Power & Energy Society and Industry Applications Society
Time: Refreshments start at 6:00PM, talk commences at 6:30PM
PowerSecure (PS), a subsidiary of Southern Company, operates over 1600 microgrids including a large fleet of standby diesel generators. Machines range from 125 to 2800 kW. They perform two missions: standby power after utility failure, and load management when utility is available. Results are derived from uniform records from a distributed data acquisition system, which includes automated data collection, analysis and storage producing a standardized record for all machines and events.
Our analysis expresses reliability as experienced by customers. The fleet is heterogenous with machines from over a dozen manufacturers and many power ratings. Machine reliability was consistent across brands, and there is no significant difference in reliability for different size machines. High quality data enables reliability growth management practices. The fleet reliability for outage demands of all durations increased from 95% in 2011 to 98% in 2014-18.
Analysis of failures’ arrival times shows that failure rate is strongly dependent on mission duration. Failure rates after 14 hours are approximately 1% of the value for the first 30 minutes of operation. This has important implications for designing systems to meet specified reliability targets, and in interpreting and comparing results from fleets with different mission durations.
Biography: Neal Dowling is Senior Engineer at MTechnology, Inc. MTechnology has performed PRA studies for clients worldwide, including data center designers, electric utilities, financial services firms, hospitals, medical facilities, owner/operators of mission critical facilities, and manufacturers serving the 7×24 uptime industry.
Neal is a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and Vice Chair of the IEEE 3006 Working Group.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SB 1974, SM 1979), he also has an extensive background in medical device development.
Free and Open to the Public; RSVP is appreciated. Visit the IEEE PES Boston Chapter website for further details
If you have any questions, please contact Amsa (781-907-3564), Ozgur (765-543-9172)