Robert L. Osborne, Ph. D

The need for online diagnostics in the electric powergeneration industry is driven by a number of significant factors . Due to the low number of new power plants being built by electric utilities, the average age of existing power plant equipment in the United States and its susceptibility to failure is increasing rapidly. Figure 1 shows the percentage of power-generation equipment over 20 years old as a function of year. Note the rapid increase of average age after 1980 and the fact that by the year 2000 fully 50 percent of all generation equipment in the United States will be over 20, the oldest average age of power plant equipment ever experienced by U.S. utilities. Thus, there is a need to know what the actual operating condition of the equipment is at all times, so that outages can be avoided by taking corrective actions at the earliest possible time and by preplanning for outages if they become necessary in order to to minimize their length.