A Concept of Reliability Centred Maintenance Applied to Geothermal Power Plant

Abstract

In pursuance of increasing power plants’ competitiveness in energy market, these power plants need to embrace a proper operating and maintenance methodology in order to lessen the level of O & M (operation and maintenance) costs. Similar to this, Geothermal Power Plants ought to embrace as well the corresponding strategy, so that they can vie for their productivity and competitiveness. The prominence methodology needed should be able to achieve the equipment’s availability at maximum level whilst attaining cost of maintenance at optimum level. Reliability is a parameter which is successfully used to serve as a warning signal for maintenance managers to respond to the lower level of availability. This paper demonstrates the application of Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) in Geothermal Power Plants. A case study of a geothermal power plant in Dieng - Central Java, Indonesia- operated by PT. Geo Dipa Energi was conducted. In this research, a framework for the implementation of RCM into Geothermal Power Plants was developed. The results include recommendations for 52 maintenance tasks to eliminate 36 malfunction of equipment that never happened, in the form of four lubricating task, four visual check task, 15 inspection tasks,18 scheduled restoration task, one scheduled discard task, and 10 no scheduled maintenance task.