Upgrading generating unit reliability is not an easy task. It involves analytical skills, equipment knowledge, and an accurate source of equipment failure data. In cases where personnel safety, possible equipment damage, or high risks of lostrevenues are concerned, cost is not important. But in most eases, the bottom line is "what equipment can I improve for the least money and receive the maximum benefit." Therefore, targets or goals are needed to make our electric generating units morereliable. How do we identify those targets.This paper presents the proven benchmarking technique for identifying electric generating peer units. This technique was developed jointly by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) and Southern Company Services. This paper shows how theunits of the same unit type (fossil-steam, gas turbine/jet engine, nuclear, etc.) are divided into smaller groups based on similar operating and design characteristics and why they are considered "peers." This paper presents an example of benchmarking,using an actual coal-fired, fossil-steam unit (referred to as the target unit) to illustrate thc benchmarking process. After the peer units are identified, the top 25 problems of the target unit are compared against its peers to determine which areas thetarget unit can improve. The results is a list of potential and obtainable targets or goals for more specific economic evaluations of our selected target unit.
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