Development and implementation of an enhanced maintenance system for a 30 year old power station

Prior to its sale to an international consortium led by National Power, Hazelwood Power Corporation was one of five generation companies which were established in February 1995 as a result of the Victorian government´s decision to establish a competitive electricity market. The Company owned a 1600 MW (8 x 200 individual units) brown coal fired power station and an adjacent brown coal mine which has reserves sufficient for another 40 years of operation at Morwell in Victoria´s Latrobe Valley. The Power Station´s 8 units, which are the oldest units of the three Latrobe Valley generators, were progressively commissioned from November 1964 up until August 1971. The station´s performance at that time was extremely poor due to low availability and excessively high maintenance costs. This paper concentrates on the strategy that we developed to lift the performance of the power station to a position where it could successfully compete with the other two Latrobe Valley brown coal generators whose more modern plant provided them with a significant competitive edge due to their inherent lower operation and maintenance cost structures. A considerable portion of this paper is devoted to the importance of developing an integrated operational maintenance culture which is driven by the fundamental business goals. The improvement process was driven by the use of a simple four element model which embraced both the technical and human factors associated with achieving optimal plant and business performance