Study on distributed cooperative maintenance decision supporting system for hydropower plant

Condition-based maintenance (CBM) is a systematic engineering, subject to such conditions as equipment status, water resources and power market demands. In order to reduce equipment downtime and maintenance cost, the maintenance strategy in hydropower plants has to be progressively transferred from time-based maintenance (TBM) to CBM, therefore it is very important to achieve harmony between operators, experts and the computer, against which presented in this paper was the distributed cooperative maintenance decision supporting system for hydropower plant (DCMDSS). This paper discussed the principle of and approach to distributed cooperative diagnosis decision-making by such three technologies as computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), intelligent agent and virtual reality (VR). The paper also presented in detail the systematic goal, framework and function, and the implementation method of hardware and software. The DCMDSS has been put into operation in hydropower plants, to prove effective.