Power Plant Operations and Flexibility

Maple House, Birmingham

09 September 2015
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The only event in the UK specifically aimed at operators of fossil power plants

Overview

Following on from the success of its other, wider, power industry seminars, and the successful one day seminar on Demand Response & Flexible Operations of UK Power Plant held in November 2013, the Institution has announced a new, one day seminar, on Power Plant Operations, Maintenance & Flexibility.

This event is specifically intended to benefit managers and staff from the operations side of the industry. This event will draw together those involved in the management, operation and maintenance of fossil power plant to discuss common problems, learn about the latest O&M practices, meet fellow operators from other stations and share experience.

What do the experts say?

“At last an opportunity for the guys in the front line of power plant operations to get together and share experience.”
Fossil Fuel Committee for the Power Industries Division, Institution of Mechanical Engineers

“An event like this could not come at a better time, the demands on operators of conventional plant are changing with the market shift to greater volumes of renewable energy. This is a great opportunity to share experience on a wide range of topics from optimising start up and shutdown to short term preservation techniques, a must for operators and supporting companies.”
Sean Atton, ‎Production Manager, E.ON

Day 1

08:30 - Full Programme

08:30 REGISTRATION AND REFRESHMENTS

09:00 CHAIR’S OPENING REMARKS
Sean Atton, ‎Production Manager, E.ON

09:10 Keynote: The Impact Of Renewables Penetration And Changing Economic Incentives In The Wholesale Power Market
John Ruthven, Commodities Trader, SSE
• Renewables, particularly wind and solar have been growing at an increasing pace over the last decade
• Carbon emissions targets have created economic incentives that push coal and less efficient gas to the margin of economic viability
• The intermittency of wind in particular has forced generators to be more flexible

09:40 Using Your Existing Industrial Data to Reduce Failures, Increase Availability and Reduce Maintenance Costs
Phillip Hirst, Solutions Consultant, GE Intelligent Platforms
• Detecting, diagnosing, and prioritising equipment and process problems before they become costly failures
• Specific, relevant, and actionable intelligence that makes people more proactive and productive
• Using equipment condition to optimise your maintenance activities ‎

10:10 Question and Answer Session

10:40 NETWORKING REFRESHMENT BREAK

11:10 Data, Information, Knowledge, Action
Lee Beresford, Team Leader, E.ON New Build and Technology Limited
• Supporting production by realising more value from what we already know
• Improving confidence and speeding up decision making through the integration of knowledge sources
• Achieving large scale user buy-in by keeping it simple

11:40 Alarm Management Best Practice - EEMUA Standards
James Fraser, Director of Sales and Marketing, Emerson
• Strategies for utilising modern technology to assist with increasing flexibility whilst reducing complexity
• Utilising alarm rationalisation, graphical standards and diagnostic data to drive best practice operational and maintenance strategies
• Examples from recent project implementations at UK and European utilities

12:10 Question and Answer Session

12:40 NETWORKING LUNCH

13:40 Human Factors of Control Room Operations
Richard Simcock, Human Factors Specialist, Ergonomic Systems
• Understanding the nature of different tasks, and the different elements that we need to support human reliability
• Gain insight into the importance of considering human performance influencing factors
• Explore what we can expect based on the environment and task we have given operators rather than just thinking about what we 'want'.

14:10 Strategies For Plant Preservation
Speaker to be announced

14:40 Question and Answer Session

15:10 NETWORKING REFRESHMENT BREAK
15:40 SSE Medway Station - Good Practice in Startup and Shutdown
David Smith, Operations Support Engineer, SSE
• Exploring the standardisation of operating practices
• Understand how to optimise run up rates
• Insight into changes to the plant for short term preservation

16:10 Panel Discussion - Dealing with Reliance and Process safety
• How to deal with abnormal circumstances and incidents
• Gain insight into how different teams responded in the heat of the moment and lessons learnt
• Focusing on the emergency responses and the positive case studies

16:40 CHAIR’S CLOSING REMARKS

16:50 END OF SEMINAR

JOHN RUTHVEN : COMMODITIES TRADER, SSE

John Ruthven has worked in energy trading for over four years. He started as a graduate, having studied economics to Masters level at the University of Dundee. John’s first role was as a shift trader, trading intra-day power before moving to prompt power, trading from “day ahead” to “balance of month”. John has recently started to hedge the SSE thermal and renewable generation portfolio in the wholesale markets, trading power, sparks, coal, gas and carbon from “front month”
to winter 2019.

SEAN ATTON: PRODUCTION MANAGER, , E.ON

Sean Atton is a Mechanical Engineer employed as Production Manager for the E.ON Ratcliffe on Soar Power Station. Sean has worked in the electricity supply Industry for 15 years undertaking roles as Plant Manager, Engineering Manager and Production Manager on large coal and CCGT sites. A brief departure from large scale generation was taken in 2010 to set up the E.ON Sustainable Energy Operations teams adopting district heating schemes supplying E.ON’s first domestic heat customers in the UK. Prior to working in the electricity supply industry Sean worked in Steel Production for Corus and British Steel, working in maintenance, engineering, environmental management and finally operations management.

PHILLIP HIRST: SOLUTIONS CONSULTANT, GE INTELLIGENT PLATFORMS

Phillip Hirst has over 25 years of power industry experience, holding a variety of engineering, maintenance and management roles within utility companies both in the UK and also overseas. His area of expertise was in improving performance and reliability through targeted engineering improvements and developing high performing teams. Phil now works at GE Intelligent Platforms as a Solution Consultant, where he and his colleagues work with new and existing customers in the Power and Oil & Gas industries to understand their specific asset management challenges and tailor effective working solutions that enable the customer to make a step change improvement to their business performance.

JAMES FRASER: DIRECTOR OF SALES AND MARKETING, EMERSON

James Fraser is Sales and Marketing Director for Emerson for the power sector, and has been in this position for five years. Aside from being involved with the conceptual definition and implementation of power plant modernisation and optimisation solutions, James also has significant experience as a control system engineer, developing compliance and optimisation systems in many industries around the world.

RICHARD SIMCOCK: HUMAN FACTORS SPECIALIST, ERGONOMIC SYSTEMS

Richard Simcock currently works at Ergonomic Systems, which specialises in the practical application of human factors/ergonomics principles in order to develop a human-centred working environment where systems, tasks and people are compatible and complementary. Richard has extensive experience within high risk industries, working in the areas of human factors design, workplace assessments, human reliability analysis and human factors training.

DAVID SMITH: OPERATIONS SUPPORT ENGINEER, SSE

David Smith completed an electrical apprenticeship at HM Dockyard Chatham, then an Engineering degree at Southampton University before joining the CEGB in 1975. He trained in coal stations in the Midlands and then joined shift operations teams in the South East Region at Belvedere, Northfleet. He then Littlebrook ‘D’ from commissioning to Base Load through 1984/85 and 2-shifting into privatisation. He had a temporary placement within the design and commissioning of cable lines then returned to power generation at AES Medway, which became an SSE plant in 2004. He worked in base load operations until the end of a LTI gas contract and then in flexible operations, efficiency, reporting and environmental duties.

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