Challenges
The probability of equipment failures in hydropower-generating facilities increases dramatically after 40 or 50 years of operation. Right now, the majority of plants in the world are at or beyond this critical point. Are you prepared for unexpected breakdowns, loss of production, and unbudgeted expenses?
Hydro-plant operators need to make many decisions as part of an overall life-cycle planning strategy. These range from major maintenance and spare-part purchases to instrumentation installations, rehabilitation, and equipment-replacement schemes. Generation and transmission companies need a tool that can evaluate equipment-intervention schemes, optimize investment timing and prioritize capital spending.
You're planning for the future. So your cost streams must include expenses associated with the risk that equipment components may fail. As equipment ages, the risk of wear-out failures increases exponentially and these risk costs become the dominant factor in the analysis.
Solutions
Capital investment and major maintenance planning
HydroVantage™ helps you prepare for and manage the risks that lie ahead. It increases reliability, and at the same time can save from 10–30% of your current capital-expenditure-budget allocation. Use it to evaluate intervention strategies, optimize investment timing, and prioritize capital expenditures.
Calculate all future costs of equipment failure
Equipment components have life-cycle costs that are much higher than just the immediate maintenance costs, capital costs, and associated benefits. For an accurate assessment, the costs related to the risk of equipment failures must also be taken into account. HydroVantage™ does much of the thinking for you. It's the tool you need to evaluate the complete cost of owning, servicing, and repairing your most complex equipment.
Benefits
- HydroVantage™ provides a formal business case, one that's suitable for making presentations to power utility decision-makers regarding the completion of rehabilitation work.
- It assists with cost-benefit analyses and capital justifications for the next phases of a project.
- A clearly defensible financial justification for launching a project is provided.
- It prioritizes rehabilitation expenditures.
- HydroVantage™ considers the costs associated with the risks of equipment failures, maintenance costs, capital costs, and the associated benefits.
- It controls the judgment bias traditionally associated with capital-expenditure planning.