Calculation of Power Plant Component Reliability Indicators from the VGB Power Plant Information System KISSY

Project Number 361

VGB has continuously collected data of availability and unavailability incidents within the power plant information system KISSY for decades. This data collection is a unique source of information and is analyzed and published annually in technical scientific reports in a standardized way.

The European Working Group Performance Indicators expects additional value, when the unavailability incidents are used to calculate reliability indicators per component for specific subsets of power plants.

For this purpose the existing raw event data in KISSY together with the system designation (KKS function code), the event characteristic key (EMS) etc. of the unavailability incidents of KISSY will be evaluated. Power plants will be selected unanimously.

From this research project a method can be derived to calculate reliability indicators for systems and components in a systematic way. These reliability indicators will be reported for specific subsets of power plants. This will allow the improvement of plant configuration, the optimization of maintenance of power plants, setting unavailability targets and forecasting component failure probabilities as a function of their operating conditions (for instance cycling power plants).

This kind of evaluation covering specifically components of conventional power plants is not available yet. At present publicly available data only exist for specific nuclear components or for components under different conditions (offshore). It is expected that a high gain in knowledge for the power plant branch could be achieved without or with minimal additional efforts of data collection. The calculation method can be implemented with limited additional program development in the KISSY database. The new system and component reliability indicators will be published in a separate technical-scientific report. It is intended to include the indicators in the existing "Analysis of Unavailability Incidents of Thermal Power Plants" technical scientific reports later.