Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2016 NuclearPlantJournal.com
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Research &
Development...
failures affect numerous components,
including transformers, circuit breakers,
protective relaying, and insulators.
The issue is further complicated by the
division of responsibilities for the plant’s
interconnection with the transmission
grid.
Ongoing Development
The NOPR roadmap project is
focused on building a strategy to improve
offsite power reliability with a more
collaborative approach, bringing together
stakeholders, and focusing EPRI research
on implementing solutions. A series
of joint nuclear and transmission and
substation (T&S) workshop sessions were
held to reviewoperational experience from
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the
Institute of Nuclear Power Operations,
and EPRI’s T&S organization, and then
evaluate this information against existing
EPRI guidance. Several joint efforts
were identified, including projects for
large power transformer (LPT) asset
management, high voltage circuit breaker
(HVCB) maintenance, and advanced
coatings for insulators.
The LPT asset management project
will focus on research to evaluate the
use of the T&S Power Transformer
Expert (PTX) software tool for NPP
station auxiliary transformers (SATs) and
generator step-up (GSU) transformers.
The HVCB maintenance project will
focus on more efficient condition
monitoring and maintenance of these
critical components.
Finally, T&S program 35 (Overhead
Transmission) has been performing
evaluations of various superhydrophobic
and icephobic coatings to determine
their effectiveness for application to
switchyard equipment, such as insulators
and overhead conductors. Operational
experience reviews revealed that many
LOOP events were caused by insulator
flashovers. Flashovers can be caused by
contamination on the insulator, coupled
with moisture buildup from snow, ice, and
rain. There were also events related to ice
buildup on switchyard buses that led to
electrical faults and plant trips. Advanced
coatings may reduce the occurrence of
such events.
Final proposed products also
include a methodology to identify
critical equipment for NPP offsite
power reliability, additional monitoring
and prognostic technologies for critical
equipment, and resiliency (event
recovery) recommendations.
Collaborating to Improve Reliability
“The cross-sector cooperation with
T&S has been a key contributor to the
project thus far,” said Chris Kerr, the
nuclear project lead. “Going forward,
roadmap updates will reflect input
from the NOPR Technical Advisory
Committee, and will incorporate
preliminary results from ongoing
projects.” This collaborative research
will result in knowledge, methodologies,
and technologies to improve NPP offsite
power reliability. NPP operators and
associated transmission owner/operators
will be the primary end users. In addition,
vendors for commercialization of the
monitoring and prognostic technologies
will benefit from the results of this
research.
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