Importance of Backup Generators
For most applications and for homeowners, a backup generator is crucial. It proves to be beneficial even in the event of the shortest interruption in utility power. At Perennial Group, we provide diesel generators for rent.
You will be subject to unscheduled downtime if you lose power and your generator does not start. Thus, you should perform maintenance on a regular basis, in order to give your generator the best chance at running as expected. Hence, you should perform proper generator maintenance to keep your generator in peak working condition.
What is Shutdown Maintenance?
The temporary closure of a complete plant or section of a plant is known as Shutdown maintenance. Its purpose is to carry out planned preventive maintenance activities of all the equipment therein.
Improvements and spare replacements of parts require the plant operations to be stopped and hence it needs shutdown maintenance. Shutdown maintenance is planned well in advance as it involves many moving parts, and it usually lasts for a number of days or weeks.
Shutdown maintenance is also called maintenance turnarounds, Turnaround Maintenance (TAM), maintenance shutdowns, or Turnaround, Shutdowns, and Outages (TSO). Shutdown maintenance is costly, time-consuming, and involves high risks, but it is an essential and critical element of plant maintenance strategy. In process industries and other industries that have continuous operations, shutdown maintenance is an essential and integral element of the plant life cycle. Based on environmental factors, some industries plan seasonal shutdowns and turnovers, for example, hydropower plant shutdowns based on the flow of the river/or winter freeze.
Plant outage or maintenance outage appears similar to Shutdown Maintenance. It is true that plant operations are stopped in both of these events but these events are different. Plant outages are caused by unplanned events like power outages, service disruptions, equipment breakdowns, or raw material shortages. On the other hand, shutdown maintenance is a scheduled and planned event and hence it is different from a plant outage which is a forced event.
Benefits of Shutdown Maintenance
As you must have learned now, Shutdown Maintenance is focused on improving plant operations and efficiency.
Below mentioned are some of the benefits of planned shutdown maintenance:-Increased Operational Efficiency – Shutdown maintenance increases the performance of individual equipment which lowers energy costs and improves overall efficiency of the plant and operations.
- Reduction in Downtime – Shutdown Maintenance can improve the availability and uptime of individual equipment if executed effectively, which increases the overall plant availability, throughput, and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and reduces the downtime.
- Increased Reliability – Shutdown maintenance focuses on improvement in equipment efficiency and plant performance. As a result, plant outages and equipment failures are avoided which improves equipment reliability and plant reliability.
- Productivity of the People – Since people on the production and maintenance team are spending less time on plant outages and equipment failures and more time on productive activities, their productivity increases. Increased productivity generates more output per employee and improves the business goals.
- Improved and Enhanced Asset Life – Shutdown maintenance not only improves the equipment’s performance but also its useful life. Thereby extending asset life and avoiding high equipment replacement costs.
- Sustainability and Safety of Operations – Plant Efficiency improvements, in turn, reduce waste and effluents, and thus promotes a safe environment and sustainability of operations.
- Improved Return on investment (ROI) – Improved plant performance and Deficiency resolution ensures energy savings, better production output, loss avoidance, and waste reduction. All of these contribute directly to return on investment, revenue, and plant profitability.
How Does Shut Down Maintenance Work?
You need to invest in a lot of planning and preparation if you wish to get the most maintenance out of the shortest possible turnaround. There are no golden rules for maintenance turnarounds as such, but you can follow these five steps to stay organized.
- Setting Scope First of all try to answer a lot of “what” questions, including which assets and equipment you are going to cover. Think about what you hope and plan to do with each. For example, you might be testing and inspecting some equipment while repairing and replacing some others. You need to prioritize the work that you can only complete during a shutdown operation period. If something is there that your team can close out during normal operations, then leave it off the list.
- Work Planning At this step, look at the “how” part of the turnaround. This means you are developing inspections and tasks, and making sure you are set to have the parts and materials you need to close out the work properly. You need to confirm you have the right tools and sensors if you are planning a lot of inspections.
- Scheduling Everything Consider the order in which the team is scheduled to complete the work. This is very important. Estimate how much time the team needs for each task, and then schedule accordingly. Keep separate time to review all the work. Try to add some time and resource padding to your scheduling.
- Shutting Down of Operations Finally, you can do the actual shutdown of operations, once you have everything scoped, planned, and scheduled.
- Take a Review of the Entire Process Take a review of the entire process, and of the work the team has done. After reviewing you will be in a position to identify what went well and what did not and you can plan your next turnaround.
Keep track of updates and changes that the team makes to your original plans. Make a note if something took longer than expected, or needed different parts and materials.
How Perennial Group Can Help You in Shutdown Maintenance?
Are you planning Shutdown Maintenance for your project? Then, don’t worry, Perennial Group is here to help you with your Shutdown Maintenance activities.
- We guide you at each and every stage of the process of Shutdown Maintenance.
- We can provide you with synchronization of dg sets for your planned shutdown maintenance activities to help you keep your plant running.
- For this, we provide DG sets on hire.
- We also provide transformers on hire for any voltage tests required.
- We have load banks on hire as well as load banks for sale. Using our load banks, you can test your equipment in advance so that they perform well in a planned shutdown maintenance activity.
- Load bank testing can give you the assurance that your backup generators perform well when required.
- In case of sectional Shutdown maintenance of a plant, we can also provide backup power to the plant to keep it running.
Summary
The Shutdown Maintenance process consists of the checks and other tasks the maintenance team performs. These tasks are carried out when the facility is shut down specifically for the team to complete their work. Other names for this process are maintenance turnaround and maintenance stoppage. A lot of good planning, including setting scope, planning and scheduling the work, completing it, and then going back for a review, seeing how well you did, and finding lessons you can apply moving forward, are the factors responsible for a Successful shutdown.
At Perennial Group, we help you in performing the overall shutdown maintenance activities. We will guide you and help you at each and every stage of the process. You might be thinking where can I find a generator for rent near me, then Perennial Group is the best answer. Along with genset rentals, we also provide load banks on hire, load banks for sale, etc. Contact Perennial Group, for any queries, help, or if you need any more information!
