Advances in workstation technology benefit the Darlington equipment status monitoring system

It has always been acknowledged that an effective mechanism for tracking the state of the operating equipment in a power station is necessary. Although a percentage of the equipment is monitored by the station´s plant computers, a much larger percentage, representing all manually operated equipment, is not. The traditional means for monitoring the status of this equipment, by placing colored pins on paper operational flowsheets, is being replaced by a computer-based counterpart referred to as the equipment status monitoring (ESM) system. The needs and the requirements for such a system are discussed. How the advent of current workstation hardware and software technology allows such a system to be realized in a way that can be cost effective while satisfying those requirements that make ESM a productive operator tool is detailed