Power generating equipment in palm oil mills: e-maintenance network concept for Malaysia

Malaysian government's renewable energy efforts promote the biomass power generation and co-generation in the palm oil mills with the aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote growth of power generation and cogeneration, and reduce barriers that have hindered the adoption of biomass power generation and cogeneration technologies.Though the private maintenance service providers active in the Malaysian power generating market are providing this service, to some extent, their traditional way of handling the maintenance business, based on the transactional and price oriented business models, is not aligned to the new market requirements.To bridge the gap of policy and practice of providing maintenance services to the biomass power generating sector, this paper proposes a generic, e-maintenance network concept for maintaining Power Generating Equipment in Palm Oil Mills.Utilizing intelligent condition monitoring strategies and a supervisory on-line diagnostic system, it will manage comprehensive on-line data acquisition; internet data transmission systems, task-related data analysis and an expert background knowledge base at, strategically located, Remote Power Generation Diagnostic Center (RPGDC).This will enable detailed diagnosis of the actual plant condition for the power plant and its key components.New approach will help reduce the transactional costs by establishing strategic alliances between the service suppliers on the one side and the palm oil mills on the other