Beamex, a leading worldwide provider of calibration solutions that meet even the most demanding of requirements for process instrumentation, gives a summarized list of the most common reasons for having a proper calibration process.
In June 2018, Burhani Engineers Ltd. launched a calibration facility to offer calibration services to companies in Kenya to enhance system operation and safety by providing accurate data on system conditions. Key offerings include Pressure and Temperature calibration using State of the art portable calibration modules.
Efficiency
One of the most important reasons is to ensure that the plant is working efficiently, i.e. produces as much energy as possible form the source fuel. Even the most sophisticated control systems get the measurement data from the process measurements and if the measurements are not accurate the control system cannot control the plant properly.
Plant safety
Plant safety is an essential matter for all types of power plants. Depending on the plant type, the number of safety circuits may vary, but for all plant types is important to keep the safety circuits properly calibrated. Sure there are also regulations related to the calibration of safety circuits.
Regulation
There are various regulations valid for power plants that stipulate the calibration.
Emissions control
Depending on the plant type there are different requirements for the calibration of the continuous emission monitoring measurements.
Invoicing-related measurements
It is of course of great importance that any measurements that are directly related to the invoicing are calibrated properly.
In one of my previous blog posts I discussed reasons for calibration. Some of the reasons listed in that blog post are also valid for power plants, go check it out!
3 most common calibration-related challenges in a power plant
The three most commonly seen calibration-related challenges in a power plant seems to be:
Lack of metrology resources
In power plants, like in any process plant, the amount of dedicated, professional metrology experts seems to get smaller and smaller. The workers need to carry out various tasks and rarely have possibility to focus on metrology and calibrations.
Legacy calibration process
Often the calibration process has not been updated in a long time and is very outdated. This kind of process can be very labor intensive, may result in poor calibration accuracy, generate a lot of paper work and be prone to errors.
Outage support
Often most of the calibration work must be done during an outage. This causes a big challenge for the resource management and often external resources needs to be hired to manage all the work.