Remote monitoring and control of advanced gas turbines

The commercial risks in providing services or products in the energy business require design engineers to provide low-risk solutions to arising problems that can be implemented in the shortest possible time. Maintaining plant availability is paramount, and hence any solution must minimise prolonged exposure to the fault and prevent disruption to commercial operation. The tendency is to rely on existing knowledge; hence, control system design features usually employ established techniques rather than incur undue risk. This article describes an engineering approach to providing a control system solution to a number of remote gas turbine installations that developed instabilities within their combustion systems. To fully understand the causes of these instabilities required a service introduction of both a practical and robust control solution to meet the customer expectations. In addition, remote access to the installations to retrieve data and monitor the control system was essential in solving this problem.