Originally posted by hyperD
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Originally posted by hyperD
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Originally posted by hyperD
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Originally posted by hyperD
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You'd be surprised how often schedules are performed with little or no rational behind them. Too many times it is 'ah the more often we check the safer we'll be' when the reality is failure is not caught, and more problematic to the operation when availability is reduced increasing costs. Part of the reason I was impressed with NATS at the time, operating a radar system @ 99.999% availability. That's just over 5 minutes of annual downtime anywhere on the system. IT systems can only dream of such statistics.
You'd think gearbox. You've probably seen these turbines, they look like food whisks upside-down. However the components most responsible for mechanical failure were often the magnets. The derbies get loose causing havoc. Turbine failure is nearly always electrical. Usually something in the local control system, with failure events coming into two categories, basic & mission. And nearly every time there's a failure I've found it going back to something that occurred during the part's assembly. It's frustrating but quality matters more and more these days. The environment these things operate under (consider diurnal cycles of day & night, the seasons, coastal variations from salt air to desert sand) compared to a power station where it's a known, you only then realise how far he technology has already come. Its truly impressive but this is not something I expect the average Joe to understand. It is in part why I'm quite excited by this technology because of whatever we think of it, we're being proactive in a big way and not just relying on old proven technologies that we know to be unsustainable in the longer term.
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