Enel Green Power to deploy new predictive maintenance technology at geothermal plants
Stillwater hybrid geothermal-solar plant, Nevada (source: Enel, video screenshot)
Alexander Richter
30 May 2019
Enel Green Power North America first in North America to deploy a new innovative predictive maintenance software to optimize field operations at its geothermal facilities, with electrical submersible pumps.
Enel’s US renewable subsidiary Enel Green Power North America Inc. and NarrativeWave, a US company specialized in Software-as-a-Service and Internet of Things, signed an agreement under which Enel Green Power North America will deploy NarrativeWave’s innovative predictive maintenance software to optimize field operations at its geothermal facilities. This is the first ever use of this technology in North America at geothermal plants with electrical submersible pumps.
“This collaboration with NarrativeWave provides us with an innovative solution that will allow for better planning and prediction of maintenance activities at our geothermal sites, reducing costs and increasing productivity,” said Stephen Pike, Head of Enel Green Power’s Operations and Maintenance (O&M) in North America. “Innovation is core to our continued operational excellence and through partnerships like this one we are able to maximize the performance of our plants to deliver clean, reliable energy to our customers.”
Enel Green Power North America’s 25 MW Cove Fort, 13.4 MW Salt Wells and 33.1 MW Stillwater facilities are the only geothermal plants in North America to use largescale electrical submersible pumps for the extraction of geothermal fluid, a cleaner and more efficient technology that ensures zero energy losses. These pumps operate 1,700 feet underground in 310-degree water, a challenging setting for monitoring and maintenance activities.
Enel Green Power North America engineers and power plant operators can easily customise NarrativeWave’s software, which monitors and analyses these electrical submersible pumps’ operations using anomaly detection models based on past operational data, automatically alerting operators and making predictive O&M recommendations to prevent costly operational disruptions before they occur.
Through this software, Enel Green Power North America is better able to predict maintenance needs of these pumps and to streamline the detection-to-repair process. This software will significantly reduce the operational downtime of the geothermal plants within the renewable energy company’s portfolio, boosting operational efficiency and cutting O&M costs.
“We enjoyed the partnership with Enel Green Power, one of the largest global operators of renewable energy and a proven innovation leader, to collectively solve a specific challenge focused on their geothermal business,” said Benjamin Decio, CEO of NarrativeWave, “We look forward to strengthening our collaboration with Enel Green Power to jointly develop a solution that can now predict on average 54 days in advance of a possible defect, setting the stage for future operational improvements.”
The software technology was first deployed at Enel Green Power North America’s Cove Fort geothermal plant in Beaver County, Utah, where the company in 2016 added a hydro generator to a geothermal injection well, combining geothermal and hydroelectric power at one site. The technology has now been integrated across the company’s two other geothermal facilities both located in Nevada: Salt Wells and the award winning Stillwater triple hybrid plant, which is the world’s first integration at the same site of a medium enthalpy, binary cycle geothermal power with solar photovoltaic and solar thermal.
Source: Enel Green Power
