Teoria dell'Affidabilità e Modelli di Gestione della Manutenzione nell'Ambito degli Impianti di Produzione di Energia Elettrica

The deregulation of the electric energy market has changed the power plants from cost centers into profit centers. Operating incomes are due now not only to the quantity of energy produced but also to the best moment of its production and to a fast response to electricity demand. Operation costs are due not only to the fuel cost but also to the costs generated by the life expenditure of the plant which is caused by wear-out, creep, low-cycle fatigue and corrosion. These phenomena concern the gas turbine, the steam turbine and the heat recovery steam generator of combined cycle plants; moreover they increase in the presence of fast transients and rapid shutdown-restart cycles. It has to adopt a right maintenance policy, due to the application of the reliability theory to each component of the plant, in order to improve the performances, the availability and the reliability of electric power plants. This article explains the strict relation between maintenance policies and the reliability theory; then it describes a flexible model which allows to gather, manage and analyse data collections about industrial plant maintenance operations, taking into account particularly electric power plants.