Reliability and power loss analysis: A case study of a power plant in Nigeria

What is it about?

The desire of every developing nation is to have a constant power supply but in reality, this dream is far from being realized due to so many factors. To ensure that the power supply is relatively stable, effort should be made to assess the reliability of the power system. One of the power plants assessed has six (6) generating units with the reliability of 0.00%, 82.39%, 8.25%, 18.6%, 45.98% and 83.41%, respectively. The overall reliability of the entire power is 55.73% which accounts for erratic power supply in Nigeria. Some of the identified factors responsible for low reliability are lack of effective maintenance culture, grid constraint, plant unavailability and gas restriction. To guaranty a reliable power supply in the country, major players in the power sector should not only pay attention to maintenance exercise but also conduct this kind of study on the power transmission and distribution.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

In this study, reliability assessment of a power generating plant was investigated to provide an opportunity to checkmate frequent fault occurrence and prolonged outages. Historical data were obtained from a generating plant in Nigeria which were utilised to evaluate the overall performance of the plant and its generating units. The results showed the plant’s availability and capacity factor to be 50% and 35%, respectively. The generation loss analysis indicated that gas restriction, grid constraints and plant unavailability prevented the plant from running at maximum continuous ratings (MCR).

Perspectives