MD&A offers Control and Excitation Recommissioning Services for gas and steam turbines. Many OEMs, consultants, and companies will tell you your turbine control system is old and needs to be updated in order to achieve enhanced reliability. There are many turbines around the world running with 30+ year-old turbine control systems, which can be highly reliable when properly maintained. Generally, all that needs to be done to improve reliability is to ensure that all the I/O are properly connected, sending and receiving the proper signals, and that nuisance alarms are investigated and resolved.
Recommissioning involves performing I/0 loop-checks to ensure that all I/0 are working properly; sending & receiving the proper signals to & from the existing turbine control system just as was performed when the unit was first commissioned. The recommissioning difference is: It doesn’t take two or three months like the original installation—MD&A’s experienced controls personnel can accomplish the recommissioning in a matter of weeks.
Nuisance and/or erroneous alarms can be the cause of many perceived operational problems. Most can easily be resolved and made to only alarm when the condition actually exists and requires resolution. This helps to reduce the number of alarms annunciated during starting and operation to only those which are real and require attention.
The recommissioning process allows you to keep your existing equipment, including turbine control and HMI systems, which your personnel is already familiar with. If needed, MD&A can help with sourcing Mark* turbine control system hardware, in addition to providing services.
MD&A can provide high-quality personnel to verify calibration of all devices on the unit and auxiliaries if requested–which ensures all devices are operating properly and per specification.
By working with your plant personnel to identify recurring issues MD&A can also help to explain and understand sequences and control philosophies critical to reliability, operation, and troubleshooting. MD&A uses OEM P&IDs and documents to help understand and explain systems when necessary.
