Condition-based maintenance and asset management

This book is concerned with the process of early detection but greater benefits could be achieved from condition monitoring if the information from monitoring is used to schedule maintenance, allowing planned shut-downs so that the life of plant, of which the electrical machine forms a part, can be extended. This is the process of condition-based maintenance, first described in Chapter 1. However, further benefits could be realised from condition monitoring if the total life-cycle costs of the machine and the plant it serves could be reduced by its application. This in turn requires an estimate of the running costs of plant and forecasts of its variation throughout its life. In the light of this knowledge the plant or asset owner can operate, maintain, renew or dispose of that asset on the basis of the information made available through these processes. This is asset management. This chapter describes how these techniques could be applied to rotating electrical machines.