POWER March 2011 - 76

BENCHMARKING
2. Financial measures. At the station level, the survey results found that operation and maintenance
(O&M)-related costs took four of the top five places for financial measures reported, as a
fixed sum or as a function of generation. Interestingly, the fuel cost component in the electricity production
cost was tracked as often as the sum of non-fuel O&M and fuel costs. Capital costs, per unit
of installed capacity and per unit of generation, rounded out the top 10 financial measures reported.
Enhanced production costs (non-fuel O&M plus maintenance capital plus fuel) were reported in the
second tier of metrics (survey responses not shown on the figure) even though the metric is the sum
of other popular metrics in the figure. Many other metrics were reported by three or fewer companies,
such as administrative and general overhead budget, FTE/MWh, maintenance capital ($/MWh),
O&M material costs, and O&M overtime costs; these are not shown in the figure. Source: EUCG
O&M cost ($)
Company staffing
O&M cost ($/MWh)
Fuel cost ($/MWh)
Production cost, non-fuel O&M + fuel ($/MWh)
Fuel inventory (days)
Commercial availability
Total capital cost ($/MWh)
Total capital cost ($/kW)
Unit variable costs ($/MWh)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Number of companies
3. Operational measures. The favored operational metrics are the familiar EAF, EFOR,
capacity factor, EUOF, generation, and net heat rate. Surprisingly, EAF was the only metric identified
as used by all 16 utilities. Number of unit trips also scored high, even though it is closely
related to the other, higher-rated statistics. Not making the top 10 list were metrics such as
water chemistry, dispatch availability (the automatic generation control index), or any particular
system performance measures, such as those of the boiler or turbine. Source: EUCG
Equivalent availability factor (EAF)
Equivalent forced outage rate (EFOR)
Capacity factor
MWh output (generation)
Number of unit trips
Net heat rate
EFORd (demand EFOR)
Combustion turbine starts/failures
Auxiliary power usage
Equivalent unplanned outage factor (EUOF)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Number of companies
16 17
4. Maintenance measures. There were just nine maintenance measures that collected
four or more votes, and only two measures collected 10 votes: PM completion rate and backlog.
Half of the survey respondents included rework on their list of important maintenance measures;
only six focused on predictive work reporting. Source: EUCG
Preventive maintenance (PM) completion (%)
Corrective/preventive maintenance backlogs
Emergency work (%)
Rework (%)
Work planning estimate accuracy
Planned work schedule compliance
Predictive work (%)
Corrective/preventive maintenance ratio (%)
Shift assigned PM completion (%)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Number of companies
76
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against peer group performance-are available
only to the EUCG members that participate
in a given survey. This " give to get "
relationship between members motivates
wide survey participation. Only a top-level
summary, such as we provide in this article,
is available to companies that did not participate.
The
latest Fossil Productivity Committee
survey explored the type and usage of fossil
plant performance measures as plant- and
fleet-level reporting and target-setting metrics.
The survey explored the specific performance
measures that fossil-fired plants are
using as well as how their data is collected,
how frequently it is reported, at what levels
it is reported, and whether the data is used
to determine compensation for employees or
is only reported for informational purposes.
The goal was to present the usage frequency
of favored performance metrics so that member
organizations could improve their individual
plant and corporate processes.
Given the breadth of that survey and the
significant results, this report has been prepared
in three parts. In Part I we report on
station-level metrics. Part II will report on
company-level metrics. Both of these reports
focus primarily on past performance
metrics-lagging indicators. In Part III we
will examine favorite prospective, or leading,
indicators at both the plant and fleet level that
are used for compensation and for process
improvement purposes.
Committed to Performance
Reporting
The survey was conducted over a three-month
period in mid-2010 with a total of 13 major
U.S. utilities that have large fossil-fueled
fleets, such as American Electric Power, Tennessee
Valley Authority, Southern Company,
and PSEG Power, as well as utilities from
Israel, Korea, and Canada. For the purposes
of this article, three fossil fleet-size groupings
were established: small (up to 5 GW),
medium (5 GW to 10 GW), and large (over
10 GW). Of the 16 companies participating
in the benchmarking survey, eight were classified
as having " small " fossil-fueled fleets,
three as " medium, " and five as " large. "
Overall, the use of performance metrics in
the 16 utilities in the survey group appear to
be well established throughout each company
(Figure 1). Thirteen of the 16 respondents
reported that data on performance measures
have been collected and reported for more
than five years. However, the method used to
collect the data varied widely: nine companies
reported that data is collected by a corporate
or centralized collection and reporting
group; five use a fossil-organization central
group; and only one collects data as a plantPOWER
| March 2011

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POWER March 2011

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