Outdated, out of condition electrical assets are a drag on uptime and profitability. ABB’s Lee Todd argues that proactive equipment maintenance strategies pay significant dividends, minimizing the risk of lost production while contributing to organizations’ goals for greater energy efficiency and sustainability.
Unplanned downtime isn’t just an inconvenience. If an electrical fault halts production, its impact on revenues is immediate. Unscheduled outages can also have further-reaching consequences, from penalties for missed production targets to a tarnished brand reputation that’s hard to brush off.
Electrical infrastructures may provide few obvious signs before a component or system fails. A tripped circuit breaker can be the first sign of underlying trouble. But it often reveals little about the root cause, its location, or the most appropriate course of action to rectify things before a minor issue blows up into a much more expensive and costly problem.
No operations manager or plant owner welcomes the prospect of unscheduled downtime. The most common approach to reducing the risks of electrical failure is through regular maintenance schedules where inspections are conducted at defined intervals. A passed test means that a particular component is assumed to be in good health, requiring no further intervention until its next inspection months or years later.
Depending on the chosen maintenance regime, a component is often taken out of service and replaced according to a prescribed schedule that’s based on its assumed working lifespan. Regardless of actual condition, this means that perfectly serviceable parts are routinely thrown out or recycled. This schedule-driven ‘rip and replace’ approach is an expensive and unnecessary use of maintenance staff resources. Equally, it sees costly equipment being needlessly consigned to landfill when organizations are under pressure to demonstrate more sustainable operations with less use of natural resources and minimized waste.
This reactive, time-based approach to maintenance also feels increasingly out of step with the challenges of modern plant operations. Electrical systems are becoming more complex and harder to manage. And in an era of increased process automation with smarter connected devices and data-driven applications to optimize plant operations, the importance of keeping critical electrical systems in peak condition is more vital than ever.
Organizations are facing increased scrutiny from customers, shareholders and regulators to demonstrate increased sustainability and circularity in all aspects of their business operations. The response of many companies is an effort to decarbonize by shifting away from their past reliance on fossil fuels as a source of electrical energy. Switching to greener power is typically accompanied by initiatives to realize across-the-board efficiency improvements, affording a welcome reduction in electricity bills at a time of continuing global fluctuation in energy prices.
An increasingly popular option for many organizations is the installation of their own generating capability on site. Falling installation costs of ‘home grown’ wind and solar capacity give organizations greater control over their own energy security plus the opportunity for significant cost savings. The successful integration of renewable generation capacity on site, however, brings its own challenges. An ABB survey in 2023 confirmed that many organizations are struggling to manage and maintain increasingly complex and unwieldy electrical infrastructures. What’s more, a chronic shortage of engineering talent means that businesses are struggling to attract and retain suitably skilled staff to operate and adequately maintain equipment. Continual advances in electrification technology are bringing steady improvements in efficiency and reliability. However the skills and experience needed to stay abreast of evolving working practices and safety standards means that many organizations are permanently in catch-up mode to ensure compliance with latest legislation while maintaining production and keeping staff safe.
At a time of unprecedented market competition and geopolitical uncertainty, the need for industrial organizations to optimize the health, reliability, performance and energy efficiency of their electrical systems has never been greater. The cost of achieving these goals, however, can deter companies from paying adequate attention to the care and maintenance of their critical electrical assets. Responding to this need, an experienced partner such as ABB can help shoulder the burden on over-stretched plant owners, operations managers and maintenance teams.
We can help with strategies and practical help to care for and optimize your precious electrical infrastructure. Modernization programs and retrofits breathe new life into decades-old equipment, improving its reliability, safety and energy efficiency. We can also audit the health and condition of all your electrical systems, looking for opportunities to optimize their performance and working life in line with your wider operational and business objectives. And with digital services like remote monitoring we can keep a close eye on the status of individual assets. Using AI-driven analytics we can spot anomalous behaviors to drive proactive maintenance that anticipates costly problems rather than reacting to them – keeping your systems in peak condition and mitigating the risks of unplanned downtime that few organizations can afford.