Achiev­ing Oper­a­tional Excel­lence in the Hydro­elec­tric Industry

INTRODUCTION

The hydro­elec­tric indus­try, which gen­er­ates elec­tric­i­ty using the pow­er of mov­ing water, is a sig­nif­i­cant play­er in the glob­al ener­gy sec­tor. Effec­tive main­te­nance and man­age­ment are key suc­cess fac­tors for hydro­elec­tric pow­er plants.

As with any oth­er type of pow­er plant, hydro­elec­tric facil­i­ties require reg­u­lar main­te­nance and man­age­ment to ensure they oper­ate at peak effi­cien­cy, so that they can con­tin­ue to gen­er­ate pow­er reli­ably and sus­tain­ably over the long term as a vital source of clean and renew­able energy.

Our Client is a Peak Elec­tric­i­ty provider for the Nation­al Ener­gy Mar­ket in Aus­tralia. Pri­mar­i­ly a Finan­cial Risk Man­age­ment com­pa­ny, it has a dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­el than oth­er pow­er gen­er­a­tors. The Com­pa­ny owns and oper­ates a 3950 megawatt (MW) inte­grat­ed water and hydro-electric pow­er project and two gas fired pow­er sta­tions with a total out­put of 620MW.

THE CHALLENGE

Renoir was invit­ed to iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties to increase the avail­able MW gen­er­a­tion hours of the hydro and gas units to take advan­tage of spot mar­ket pric­ing. The chal­lenge was to cre­ate a uni­form Man­age­ment Con­trol Sys­tem across the pow­er­plants and improve main­te­nance plan­ning and review process­es, and decrease the dura­tion of planned out­age main­te­nance activities.

PROJECT APPROACH & OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS

The project was gov­erned by the client via Man­age­ment Action Teams (MATs) and a Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, who were charged with the respon­si­bil­i­ty of ensur­ing that the project devel­oped and deliv­ered sus­tain­able solutions.

Dur­ing the Focus Process™, role obser­va­tions, inven­to­ry stud­ies, sequence ques­tion­naires and work order stud­ies were car­ried out, high­light­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in the fol­low­ing areas:

IMPLEMENTATION

A Man­age­ment Con­trol Sys­tem (MCS) was imple­ment­ed in the busi­ness. The role of a Man­age­ment Con­trol Sys­tem (MCS) is to help achieve strate­gic goals by pro­vid­ing a struc­tured approach to man­ag­ing oper­a­tions and resources.

It pro­vides man­agers with time­ly and accu­rate infor­ma­tion about the orga­ni­za­tion’s per­for­mance and helps the Client enforce dai­ly, week­ly and month­ly KPI reviews, with inves­ti­ga­tions and actions gen­er­at­ed to address any excep­tions. The MCS cre­ates con­sis­tent mea­sure­ments in each region, allow­ing for cen­tral control.

The fol­low­ing solu­tions were devel­oped in response to the oppor­tu­ni­ties iden­ti­fied dur­ing the Focus Process™:

These solu­tions were devel­oped and imple­ment­ed with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of the MATs, the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, var­i­ous oper­a­tional stake­hold­ers, and departments.

Involv­ing all stake­hold­ers in solu­tion devel­op­ment leads to more effec­tive imple­men­ta­tion out­comes. Staff mem­bers pro­vide valu­able insights into poten­tial solu­tions. It increas­es engage­ment and own­er­ship of the solu­tion, lead­ing to a more pro­duc­tive and suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion and a stronger, more col­lab­o­ra­tive workplace.

The Client was sup­port­ed through­out the imple­men­ta­tion phase to ensure that full adop­tion of the new ways of work­ing was mea­sured and achieved.

KEY RESULTS

Work­ing with the Client, Renoir achieved the fol­low­ing results at the end of the project:

CONCLUSION

In con­clu­sion, the Client and Renoir col­lab­o­ra­tion improved process­es, pro­ce­dures, roles, and respon­si­bil­i­ties of the plan­ning and main­te­nance func­tions, and achieved impres­sive results.

This suc­cess­ful trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram enabled the Client to decrease its out­age hours. The imple­men­ta­tion of best mar­ket prac­tices for main­te­nance in a struc­tured way achieved sus­tain­able improve­ments with full adop­tion. In addi­tion, the Client now has all the tools to man­age and con­tin­u­ous­ly improve their operations.

The sub­stan­tial increase in oper­a­tional excel­lence has made a major con­tri­bu­tion in sup­port­ing the com­pa­ny in a com­pet­i­tive industry.