Log in and optimize your assets Hydropower is valued worldwide as a reliable, renewable, source of electricity. Hydropower facilities also offer long service life; stations over 80 years old are still in operation. But with age come higher maintenance costs and a greater chance of equipment failure.

Hydroelectric engineers, over the years, have developed ways of dealing with the possibility of age-induced failure. They include preventive, predictive and condition monitoring systems, an inventory of spare parts, and various programs for rehabilitation and replacement of critical components. All these approaches depend, ultimately, on engineering judgement of when to intervene. Since engineers are human, intervention may occur too early or too late, resulting in unnecessary expenditure or costly repairs and downtime.

There is a better way. When maintenance planning includes an element of risk assessment it is possible, in a manner of speaking, to predict the future of the equipment in question. A new decision support tool from Synexus Global does just that. It is called HydroVantage.

HydroVantage has been in development for seven years with a stand-alone version currently in use, and a web-based prototype was released for beta testing in May 2002. It is unique among programs of this kind in its mode of delivery - over the Internet, using an Application Service Provider. This means that the application is always up-to-date, reflecting current data and the latest enhancements.

HydroVantage simultaneously analyzes over 100 equipment components in a hydropower station, subjecting each component individually to a risk-based analysis. It is designed to assist asset planning managers and maintenance managers to define least-cost and optimum rehabilitation and replacement programs, and to plan capital expenditures.

The HydroVantage model draws on a database of failure characteristics for widely used equipment and systems. It allows the user to define different modes of failure, and the costs of the consequences of failure, to arrive at risk/cost predictions for the facility under management. HydroVantage recognizes the interaction between components in a system, and analyzes their interdependencies.

As a default, the HydroVantage database is pre-loaded with industry average cost-data, failure modes and intervention modes. The user is free to customize the database by adding information specific to the location and its operating conditions. The result is a powerful, reliable decision support system customized to each user's facility, capable of achieving savings in capital expenditures of 15 - 30 percent.

For more information, contact Hans de Meel: Tel: (905) 374-0701, Fax: (905) 374-1157, E-mail: hdemeel@synexusglobal.com Visit us at www.synexusglobal.com