Abstract
Today’s power plant operator faces a range of challenges, from the reduction of well-trained plant personnel, to load cycling, to extended periods between outages and grid fluctuations brought about from renewables. The added stress placed on large power generators – both hydrogen and air-cooled – lends increased credence to online condition monitoring technologies and risk mitigation strategies.
Generator Condition Monitors, or Core Monitors, have been used for many years to detect hot-spots in hydrogen-cooled generators. Corrective action based signals from this equipment has helped plants minimize damage to generators. This presentation will cover the operating principle behind the Generator Condition Monitor and how using this technology can mean the difference between a brief shutdown for minor repairs and a major overhaul.
This presentation will also review the use of Generator Condition Monitors to detect overheating in air-cooled generators. Recent advancements in air-cooled generator designs have resulted in increasingly higher power ratings. The higher power densities place significantly greater stresses on the materials and structures, making slight decreases in cooling efficiencies much more critical. Probability of overheating in these air-cooled machines becomes greater as designs are pushed closer to their critical limits.