POWER February 2016 - 43

OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE
Using Sensor Technologies to
Optimize Maintenance of Power
Plant Water Systems
Nondestructive technologies make the inspection of a plant's least accessible
components relatively easy and deliver results that minimize unexpected
failure-and expense.
Larry Hawk
W
hen we undertook an initiative
at Granite Ridge Energy (GRE)
to identify, prioritize, and assess
components that were due for their 10-year
assessments, we didn't know quite what we
were taking on or how to approach it. We had
heard, however, of using advanced sensors to
good effect in inspecting pipelines and tank
interiors that are not easily accessed and thus
not usually included in standard outage iterations.
After lengthy discussion at the committee
level, we decided to put a dart on that
board.
Granite Ridge is a 753-MW natural gas-
fired, combined cycle facility located just
outside of Manchester, N.H. (Figure 1). The
plant is equipped with two Siemens 501G
combustion turbines and one Siemens KN
steam turbine.
Commissioned in March 2003, GRE operates
at a heat rate of less than 7,000 Btu/
kWh and benefits from a long-term belowmarket
commodity contract, making it one
of the lowest-cost combined cycle gas turbine
plants in the New England Power Pool
supply stack. Through its operator, NAES
Corp., owner Granite Ridge Holdings LLC
has undertaken several reliability-enhancing
initiatives in an ongoing effort to improve its
availability factor.
Three Challenges to Address
We targeted three systems, none of which had
been assessed since the plant's commissioning:
■ A 16-inch ductile iron cooling water line
that supplies treated water from the City of
Manchester's treatment plant for cooling
tower makeup.
■ An 84-inch, 708-foot-long underground
circulating water line (a 344-foot supply
line and a 364-foot return line) consisting
of 40 sections of prestressed concrete
cylinder pipe (PCCP).
February 2016 | POWER
www.powermag.com
43
■ The interiors and undersides of GRE's
500,000-gallon demineralized water tank
and 800,000-gallon cooling tower makeup
water tank.
After talking about the idea with my counterparts
at other facilities and getting some
referrals, I made contact with the Marylandbased
Structural Group, which retains the
sensor services of Pure Technologies U.S.
Inc. and the Houston-based Mistras Group.
Structural Group did a good job of convincing
our management that advanced sensors
would provide cost-effective, nondestructive
ways to better understand the risks associated
with these assets and establish baselines to
make long-term planning and procurement
more effective.
Acoustic Sensor for the Cooling
Water Line
On the advice of Structural Preservation
Systems, a unit of the Structural Group, we
opted to use acoustic technology provided by
Pure Technologies to determine the condition
of the cooling water line, which carries
treated wastewater approximately 3.5 miles
1. Low-cost power. Through its operator,
NAES Corp., owner Granite Ridge Holdings
LLC has undertaken several reliability-enhancing
initiatives to improve the availability factor
at Granite Ridge Energy in Londonderry, N.H.
Courtesy: Granite Ridge Energy
from Manchester's publicly owned treatment
works (POTW) to the power plant. The Pure
team set up 10 transceivers along the run, and
we arranged to maintain water flow at a constant
velocity during the test.
The team then launched a SmartBall-a
small acoustic sensor embedded in a buoyant,
compressible plastic foam sphere-
inserting it through a 4-inch tap at the
POTW's pumping station (Figure 2). They
retrieved it at the GRE site's Actifloc filter
unit 6.5 hours later.
An onboard accelerometer recorded the
rotation of the SmartBall, translating it into
a velocity profile of the device as it traversed
the length of the pipeline. Tracking the position
of the SmartBall via the 10 receivers
provided a time and position stamp on the
velocity profile that was used to report the
location of a leak or gas pocket (Figure 3).
As the SmartBall approaches a leak, the
acoustic signal it detects will increase, reaching
a crescendo as the sphere passes the leak
and decreasing as the sensor continues on its
2. Follow the ball. The Pure Technologies
team used a SmartBall acoustic sensor
and tracking equipment to inspect GRE's
16-inch-diameter cooling water line, which
carries treated wastewater 3.5 miles from
Manchester's publicly operated treatment
works. Courtesy: Pure Technologies
http://www.powermag.com

POWER February 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER February 2016

Contents
POWER February 2016 - Cover1
POWER February 2016 - Cover2
POWER February 2016 - Contents
POWER February 2016 - 2
POWER February 2016 - 3
POWER February 2016 - 4
POWER February 2016 - 5
POWER February 2016 - 6
POWER February 2016 - 7
POWER February 2016 - 8
POWER February 2016 - 9
POWER February 2016 - 10
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POWER February 2016 - Cover3
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