PSEG plants to use Rolls-Royce Big Data services

Rolls-Royce is to provide PSEG with innovative digital analytics systems to drive greater plant efficiency at the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear power plants. The signature of a four-year contract to deploy Rolls-Royce's T-104 service follows a successful six-month trial.

Rolls-Royce is to provide PSEG with innovative digital analytics systems to drive greater plant efficiency at the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear power plants. The signature of a four-year contract to deploy Rolls-Royce's T-104 service follows a successful six-month trial.

PSEG's Salem and Hope Creek plants (Image: @PSEGNews)

The T-104 service uses worldwide nuclear power plant operating data to provide best-in-class asset management services. This intelligence can then be converted into valuable insights to help the plant operator maximise plant availability and reliability, allowing them to focus on the "right equipment, at the right time, with the necessary parts at hand".

The six-month pilot scheme at the New Jersey plants showed 40% of planned maintenance activities that were included in the trial, did not need to be conducted as regularly as currently scheduled.

The technique uses Big Data - a term for data sets of a very large size, typically so large that its manipulation and management present significant logistical challenges. With suitable analysis tools, Big Data can be used to reveal business and operational information, such as previously unrecognised trends or behaviour.

Big Data analytics is a core competency at Rolls-Royce, the company's executive vice-president for nuclear, Paul Tobin, said. The PSEG pilot study had shown the "true value" that could be delivered to customers, he added.

The capability has been developed from Rolls-Royce's aerospace business, where enormous data volumes are continuously generated by aircraft engines.

"We're now applying the same know-how, coupled with our worldwide nuclear operating data and expertise, to deliver high value solutions for the nuclear power generation industry," Tobin said.

PSEG Nuclear engineering vice president Paul Davison said the agreement was part of the company's efforts to focus its resources on maintaining high levels of equipment reliability by performing the right work at the right time.

"We are looking to build on the success of our pilot with Rolls-Royce to make even further equipment reliability improvements," he said.

Rolls-Royce employees will be "embedded" with PSEG so the two organisations can work together to use Rolls-Royce's forecasting data. This approach, Rolls-Royce says, will reduce overall maintenance, improve equipment reliability and reduce material consumption, leading to overall reduced costs for PSEG.

Rolls-Royce's T-104 services are also to be used in Canada at Bruce Power's nuclear power plants, under a contract announced in May 2017.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News