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Power station upgrades monitoring systems

A Sensonics product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jul 17, 2008

FawleyPower Station invested in monitoring systems for differential expansion, shaft position and bearing vibration on two steam turbine sets.

Fawley Power Station has installed Sensonics monitoring equipment, gaining more reliable and accurate data and eliminating time consuming physical overspeed tests associated with mechanical systems.

The facility is an oil-fired power station that provides 1000MW of generating capacity.

Turbine supervisory equipment and vibration monitoring devices were replaced, along with the addition of electronic overspeed protection systems for the steam-driven boiler feed pumps.

Fawley's investment in the latest monitoring systems focused on the main turbine supervisory equipment for measurement of differential expansion, shaft position and bearing vibration on the two 500MW steam turbine sets.

A high-integrity electronic overspeed system was includd for each of the main boiler feed pumps.

Sensonics equipment installed included Sentry machine protection monitors, the Senturion range of proximity eddy current probes, PZV velocity transducers and turbine detector LVDTs for casing expansion.

The project also included; Sentry monitors with proximity sensors for measuring rotor/case differential expansion using the mark-space technique, shaft eccentricity with dual measurement modes (barring and normal running speed), case expansion, thrust and speed.

A separate electronic overspeed system was also installed which employs robust two of three voting for high-integrity protection in conjunction with an excellent spurious trip performance.

Andy Millard, Instrument Engineer at Fawley Power Station, said, "Obsolescence was a key issue regarding the existing monitoring systems, we needed to update to modern systems".

"The pump and steam turbine had to be regularly de-coupled for physical overspeed tests and this was a very resource-intensive activity".

"The main Sensonics TSE equipment has proven very reliable and accurate, with the electronic overspeed equipment functioning very well".

"We appreciate the current technology, the fact that it's more reliable, along with the security of ongoing support and we've really benefited from the fact that it is not necessary to decouple the steam feed pumps as regularly as we have had to in the past due to the the built-in electronic test and calibration facility".

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