Critical Electrical Asset Life Extension:
How Electrical Builders, Inc. (EBI) is Helping Power Plants Avoid Failures & Improve Overall Performance
With over half a century of experience in the power generation services industry; women, family, and veteran-owned Electrical Builders, Inc. (EBI) has established themselves as the Nation’s premier metal enclosed electrical bus duct services contractor specializing in system improvement, maintenance, repair, custom fabrication, and transformer change-out support. Their niche; providing high quality, turnkey solutions that enable power plants to extend the lifespan of their system critical electrical assets and improve overall plant performance and safety.
Despite the fact that bus duct systems are critical to producing power, many plant asset managers and personnel overlook the importance of the system because it has no moving parts. However, these critical components are stand-alone, non-redundant, and customized to each plant. When a bus duct fails, the entire power generation unit is shut down. The unplanned downtime results in significant revenue loss and emergency repair costs. EBI’s long-standing history of servicing and refurbishing these components has shown that these costly bus duct failures can easily be avoided with routine and consistent inspection and maintenance performed by their highly qualified and experienced bus duct experts.
“We leverage our five decades of experience successfully completing over 3,900 projects to extend the life of critical electrical assets by focusing on the non-redundant components of power plants. We help them operate safely, efficiently, and without failure, by implementing proven system enhancements and asset life extension solutions,” says Jessica Netter, President and Partner of EBI.
While industry best practice recommends bus duct maintenance at every scheduled plant outage, or at a minimum every 18-24 months, Netter says many bus systems were not designed with the appropriate access ports necessary to properly inspect and maintain the complete interior of the bus duct system, leading to missed proactive preventative maintenance opportunities. The result? Unexpected failures and emergencies.
Netter continues, another cause for component failure is the influx of renewable energy, resulting in added stress on the baseload systems due to thermal-cycling. What was designed to be turned on and operate at a consistent output level for weeks/months at a time are being required to throttle up/down throughout the day. This adds stress to the baseload components, resulting in more failures.
To meet the increasing demand for emergency services, EBI developed their state-of-the-art Mobile R3 Fabrication Unit; an innovative approach to addressing their clients’ need to expedite emergency repairs and fabrication of critical parts and pieces, eliminate transit time, and provide alternative solutions to replace long-lead parts and pieces as well as obsolete or hard to find components. The R3 is a 53-foot, all-in-one, self-powered, semi-trailer that houses all the machining and tooling required to fabricate, refurbish and completely repair electrical isophase, segregated and non-segregated bus duct systems and related components in the field.
“We continue to innovate and develop new solutions and invest in resources that deliver the highest value to our clients. By creating the R3, EBI has led the way in bridging the gap between our in-house fabrication capabilities and our ability to ‘fix-on-the-fly’ and make necessary modifications to existing components while onsite based on discoveries in the field. This has proven to be a game-changer for our customers, not only in the event of an emergency failure but also as a contingency plan while performing a transformer change-out,” commented Netter.
There are other emerging trends in the industry as well. With the renewed interest in nuclear power a lot of work is being done to re-license many existing nuclear facilities to allow them to operate far beyond planned life.
“Now more than ever, asset life extension efforts and sustainability of the Nation’s existing nuclear fleet is absolutely essential to ensure a more resilient, net zero power grid. To do this, it’s critical that plants make proactive maintenance and system enhancements a priority. Maintaining electrical bus is just as important as maintaining your generator and transformer. Routine preventative maintenance is not only a cost-effective way to extend the life of your electrical assets, but also a critical task in minimizing the risk of a forced outage and avoiding bodily harm to onsite personnel,” commented Netter.
Leading utilities have partnered with EBI and rely on them to proactively manage these critical electrical assets on their behalf. This approach results in less down time, increased operational efficiency and safety, and is the key to preventing a bus duct failure.
You can learn more at https://www.electricalbuilders.com.