Wivenhoe Power Station condition assessment
Client: Tarong Energy
Location: Queensland, Australia
Date: January - June 2008
Assessing asset condition and management for reliable, long-term pumped storage hydropower.
Background
Less than 100 kilometres from Brisbane, the Wivenhoe Power Station is a pumped storage hydroelectricity plant consisting of two 250 MW units. It was commissioned in 1984 with an expected life of up to 100 years. To ensure its long and reliable service, Entura was engaged to assess the condition of most assets from the headworks to the tailrace for unit 2, to recommend activities for a major planned overhaul to improve asset condition, and to suggest improvements to current asset management and maintenance practices.
Solution
To develop a preliminary understanding of specific assets, Entura specialists sought relevant documents and drawings from Wivenhoe personnel. A desktop study was then conducted at the site, including reviewing reports of outages and asset events, maintenance data, and drawings, and discussing issues and observations with local personnel.
Based on the desktop study, Entura prepared a preliminary condition assessment report and recommended activities for the scope of an internal inspection outage. This outage enabled intrusive inspections of the assets, providing the information required for a comprehensive condition assessment report and recommendations of activities for the scope of the planned major overhaul outage in 2009.
Entura also recommended improvements to the current asset management and maintenance program as it is important that decisions to defer activities or reduce maintenance programs are based on a good understanding of asset condition and asset risks. The condition assessment on Unit 2 highlighted issues where the past asset management approach has been effectively reducing the life of some significant assets, and was increasing the risk of functional or catastrophic asset failures.
Outcome
The purpose of this engagement was to prepare a high level plan that summarised the life cycle of the main assets associated with both units at the Wivenhoe Power Station. To achieve this Entura initially provided a comprehensive condition assessment report to Tarong Energy which supported the development of the life cycle plan.
The information presented was used by Tarong Energy to plan and develop cash flow and machine outage requirements.
