22 September 2016

Lakdhanavi Ltd, the power generation arm of LTL Holdings Group, has been named the ‘Power Utility of the Year – Sri Lanka’ at the recent Asian Power Awards 2016; thanks in part to its use of the Quartzteq Lifeview® Live electrical assets monitoring solution.

The award was made in recognition of the company’s ability to operate the large-scale Yugadanavi 300 MW Combined Cycle Power Plant (known as the Kerawalapitiya Power Plant) in an efficient and prudent manner. Each of the three, 100 MW generators has been equipped with Quartzteq Lifeview® Live instruments, the totally flexible, 'state-of-the-art' real-time solution that monitors the health of electrical assets and partial discharge* on a host of rotating machines. 

All High Voltage (HV) electrical machinery exhibits partial discharge, even from new, however, almost two‑thirds of all unplanned outages, subsequent production loss and significant equipment damage can be attributed to related stator winding insulation failure. Lifeview® provides users with an invaluable insight into the internal electrical and mechanical stresses, the wear and tear and the performance of any rotating electrical plant, thereby providing an early indication of the detrimental risk factor.

As the operation and maintenance contractor at the Yugadanavi plant for the last six years, Lakdhanavi has successfully run this plant using Heavy Fuel Oil, with minimal downtime and outage, proving that Sri Lankan knowledge, ingenuity, hard work and application is second to none internationally.  It has also obtained ISO 9001 (Quality Systems) and ISO 14000 (Environmental Management) certification from Det Norsek Veritas of Norway. 

“Lifeview® is a key asset in helping plants reduce the total cost of ownership over the lifetime of a machine and is increasingly becoming an integral element of any structured maintenance and repair strategy,” explained Dr Bernhard Fruth, Managing Director for Quartzelec’s subsidiary Quartzteq. “In this instance we worked closely with Lakdhanavi to deploy the Lifeview® Live electrical assets monitoring solution on each of the three 100MW Yugadanavi power generators and the data delivered has proved invaluable in maintaining and operating them at optimum performance and with minimal degradation and disruption.”  

Lifeview® meets all major international standards and can be delivered quickly and efficiently, with many stock components being tailored to meet specific requirements. Designed to operate with all Quartzteq sensors along with partial discharge couplers from other manufacturers, these sensors are installed on key parts of the electrical machines to provide detailed data acquisition with changes in condition being measured against a set of baseline parameters. They also provide the ability to carry out visual diagnostics of winding insulation without the need to fully dismantle the machine. Analysis is then supported by a vast database of diagnoses carried out by Quartzteq over many years.

Two Lifeview® variants are available: Quartzteq's Lifeview® ‘Live’ system is designed for critical assets and provides owners and operators of HV motors and generators with a fully installed, permanent solution for partial discharge monitoring. The Lifeview® ‘Mobile’ version offers a flexible approach to analysing any machines' insulation system periodically on-line, typically during investigative or maintenance periods, but without compromising the quality or the analysis of the data captured.

LTL Holdings Group is pioneering similar power plant management projects and this is putting them on the international power map. It also operates two additional power plants in Bangladesh where a similar approach to international best practices and plant maintenance has been adopted and other opportunities are being actively pursued.