Mantenimiento de una central

A 90-minute, 4-round basic Express simulation for Spanish vocational training (Formacion Profesional, grado superior), module 0674 Mantenimiento de centrales electricas of the Tecnico Superior en Centrales Electricas.

You are Irene Castellote, the new technician of the maintenance office of a fictional 400 MW combined-cycle gas power plant in the province of Ciudad Real that sells its energy on the day-ahead market, where a week of operation is worth a lot in winter and in the summer heat and almost nothing in spring. Over the 52 weeks of 2032 you plan the year's maintenance.

Round by round you decide when to do the gas turbine's major overhaul and which maintenance strategy to run (condition-based with vibration, thermography and oil analysis, time-based preventive, run to failure or preventive at double frequency); the critical spares and the overhaul contractor, including the coordination of business activities; how to respond to a vibration alarm on a feed-water pump and how to organise the repair team; and how electrical work is done (the five stages of work without voltage) and how to prepare the winter peak.

Each week the planned and forced stops, the margin earned and lost, the repair costs and the expected accidents are recomputed. Each round is scored on the margin, the forced-outage rate, the margin lost to unavailability and the expected accidents, with availability, forced-outage weeks and infractions shown but not scored. Stopping when energy is cheap turns maintenance into savings.

A contractor without the coordination of business activities, or electrical work without verifying the absence of voltage and earthing, caps the score. Spanish with English.

An introductory simulation that assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, designed for undergraduate courses. It also works in vocational and high-school programmes and in onboarding sessions.