Brüel & Kjær Vibro installs their 3rd generation monitoring system at the Huntly power station in New Zealand

Brüel & Kjær Vibro (B&K Vibro) announced that it had received an order for the supply of VC-8000 SETPOINT® systems and services for monitoring a 250 MW gas/coal fired steam turbine, generator and main boiler feed pump at the Huntly power station, the largest in New Zealand. Huntly is owned by Genesis Energy, the third largest generating company in New Zealand in terms of production capacity.

The B&K Vibro system provides both protection and condition monitoring of the generating units. In fact, the SETPOINT system represents the third generation monitoring system from B&K Vibro installed at the Huntly power station since 1995; Compass Classic, VC-6000/Compass 6000 and VC-8000 SETPOINT.

One of the unique aspects of the monitoring at Huntly power station is that the generating units are mounted on steel frame foundations as a means of providing earthquake protection.  An undesirable consequence of this type of construction, however, resulted in vibration resonances becoming very close to the operating speed. This problem has since been mitigated but it still creates a challenge to the monitoring system. As with the previous B&K Vibro monitoring system, the VC-8000 SETPOINT system was customized to provide a unique speed adaptive monitoring strategy for both protection and condition monitoring of the units to deal with this condition.

In addition to this, the VC-8000 was also selected based on its ability to stream all static and dynamic vibration data into the existing OSIsoft PI System data historian. By using the data historian server, this thus eliminates the need for a separate, special-purpose vibration database. This approach not only reduces IT infrastructure, but it also allows for easier correlation of process data with machinery vibration data for advanced condition monitoring and diagnostics. Once the data is in the PI System, it can be viewed using standard PI System visualization tools as well as by B&K Vibro’s SETPOINT CMS software, which provides enhanced tools specifically for visualizing and plotting vibration data. Core functionality within the PI System also allows customers to deploy advanced, automated condition monitoring functionality and analytics that can continuously identify machinery problems and proactively notify plant personnel.

Installation support, commissioning and training is being provided by B&K Vibro.