Failure of steam turbine rotors and blades while in service can cause significant damage to the plant and put at risk the safety of personnel. Current inspection techniques result in large operational cost being incurred by the power generator. In response to this challenge, the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI) of the USA sponsored a project to develop and validate a system for in-situ examination of the blades and connections to enable early detection of defects in pinned-finger low-pressure turbine blades using Digital Radiography (DR) techniques. The project successfully provided a practical, safely deployable DR system which achieved the inspection performance criteria.

The strong focus on smart grid security over the past several years has resulted in a substantial evolution of standards and guidance, as well as an increased awareness by leaders and stakeholders around the importance of a strong security posture. In essence, the industry has made very significant progress in the what and why aspects of smart grid security. Given the authors’ extensive experience in smart grid design, deployment and operation they can assert the even greater importance of execution in establishing that strong posture. Their study focuses on the considerations and challenges inherent with the development, implementation, operation and sustainability of security in smart grid ecosystems. Smart Grid security components often do not lend themselves to traditional IT-centric controls nor automated deployment, instrumentation, monitoring and response. They will identify a set of core tenets that serve to enable a strong security posture and corresponding application based on their experience.

Soil–structure interaction (SSI) for offshore wind turbine supporting structures is essentially the interaction of the foundation/foundations with the supporting soil due to the complex set of loading. This study reviews the different aspects of SSI for different types of foundations used or proposed to support offshore wind turbines. Due to cyclic and dynamic nature of the loading that acts on the wind turbine structure, the dominant SSI will depend to a large extent on the global modes of vibration of the overall structure. This study summarises the modes of vibration of offshore wind turbines structures supported on different types of foundations based on observations from scaled model tests and numerical analysis. As these are new structures with limited monitoring data, field records are scarce. Where possible, field records available in the public domain are also used to compare with experimental findings.

Modular power protection and conversion technology, particularly in the form of UPSs, has long been used in commercial applications, but take-up in industrial applications has, to date, been relatively slow. This relatively slow uptake is due, in part, to a limited understanding of the ‘ilities’ (‘Availability’, ‘Reliability’, ‘Scalability’, ‘Flexibility’ and ‘Maintainability’) commonly associated with modular technology and how the various ‘ilities’ complement each other. In this fourth of five papers, the author will define flexibility in the context of the increasingly important and popular modular technology and will discuss how truly flexible systems allow system designers to design power protection systems capable of adapting to the potentially changing needs of a site and/or its critical load.

Modular power protection and conversion technology, particularly in the form of UPSs, has long been used in commercial applications, but take-up in industrial areas has, to date, been relatively slow. Why is this so? Whenever anyone describes the benefits of ‘modular’ power protection systems they invariably discuss topics such as ‘Availability’, ‘Reliability’, ‘Scalability’, ‘Flexibility’ and ‘Maintainability’, but what exactly does each of these ‘ilities’ mean and why are they important? This study is the first in a series of five in which the author, explains the terminology behind this increasingly important and popular technology.

Modular power protection and conversion technology, particularly in the form of Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPSs), has long been used in commercial applications but take-up in industrial applications has, to date, been relatively slow. This relatively slow uptake is due, in part, to a limited understanding of the ‘ilities’ (‘Availability’, ‘Reliability’, ‘Scalability’, ‘Flexibility’ and ‘Maintainability’) commonly associated with modular technology and how the various ‘ilities’ complement each other. In the second of five articles, David Bond, Managing Director at Benning Power Electronics (UK) Ltd. will explain Availability and Reliability in the context of the increasingly important and popular modular technology.

Effective integrity monitoring of assets subject to corrosion and erosion while minimising the exposure of personnel and ecosystem to hazardous environments, is a challenge in many industries. One solution to this problem is permanently installed condition monitoring (PICM) equipment, which can continuously provide information on the rate of corrosion, erosion or other fault mechanisms. Coupled with this increasingly popular PICM concept is the need to operate these inspection systems in even the most severe environments. This often involves operating in extreme temperatures to allow in situ monitoring of the processes that cause failure, in order to prevent the outages and unplanned shutdowns that reduce the productivity of the process or power plant assets. Here piezoelectric materials, the essential electro-mechanical heart of ultrasonic PICM devices, are presented to highlight how novel high-temperature variants are enabling condition monitoring systems to operate in the most extreme environments. The system applicability for wall thickness monitoring in high-temperature environments is demonstrated through experimental studies on pipes at temperatures up to 350°C.

The price drop of photovoltaic (PV) modules and other balance of sytem components has led to an increase in ‘soft’ costs, which include the design and the engineering of the system. Reducing these soft costs has thus become one of the challenges the PV industry has to tackle to achieve further global systems costs limitation. A sound use of software can enable time savings during the design process and a better system performance thanks to optimisation features. This study focuses on three aspects addressed by software for solar PV: layout, yield estimation and electrical sizing. These three topics show strong interaction and overlap most of the time; therefore an efficient design process would require the ability for the different pieces of software to communicate.

The risks involved in grid connection for a power generation project are considered critical because of the potential impact on the project financial model and development schedule. This exposure to technical and financial risks during different grid connection stages could potentially prevent investment in the project. The identification of grid connection-related risks is not straightforward due to the regional variations in connection processes, technical characteristics of the grid, and compliance criteria. However, based on the author's experience from his previous grid connection and infrastructure due diligence experiences, there are common risk developers and lenders typically face. These often affect the cost and/or timescale of building the grid connection assets themselves or can impact operational costs later in the project life, and can adversely impact the project's financial viability and development schedule. Issues in the grid connection process may even cause legal conflicts between network operators and project stakeholders. Therefore, this high-level study provides an overview of common risks associated with the distribution grid connections of power generation projects, considers how these can be mitigated and the types of technical support that project developers and lenders may find useful at different stages of the grid connection process in Great Britain.

Additive manufacturing comprises a powerful family of technologies which have recently evolved to offer the ability of final production as well as prototyping and design work. However, there are some limitations which restrict the universal adoption of additive manufacturing as a substitute for conventional processes such as injection moulding. This study presents the current state-of-the-art in additive manufacturing through a series of examples and case studies in the medical field. An in-depth case study of an improved glucose testing strip is used as an example of a hybrid approach combining conventional and additive manufacturing. These examples are used to explore the advantages and disadvantages of additive manufacturing and a new set of criteria is drawn up to evaluate whether a medical product should be produced through additive or conventional techniques.

It is often stated that industrial control system (ICS) environments are difficult to protect from cyber attack. The use of legacy equipment, extended system life cycles, real-time requirements etc. are often quoted as reasons why ICS is so difficult to protect. These are valid arguments and should not be dismissed; however, the danger with this message is that ICS owner/operators may become daunted by prospect of implementing a cyber security programme. There is little acknowledgment of how the characteristics of ICS can be leveraged to provide a significant security benefit. Applying IT best practise is not always suitable for ICS environments, causing operational issues and security controls that fail to reach their potential. ICS environments allow the implementation of strict deny-by-default, allow-by-exception policies. Such strict configurations may be unmanageable in many IT environments due to the fluid nature within IT, where users may want to use a variety of different programmes and services. ICS environments are much more static meaning that strict configurations are manageable, resulting in a more robust control system where compliance with change management procedures and health and safety executive (HSE) work permit systems are enforced and auditable. By blindly applying IT policy, the benefits of this environment could be missed.

Modular power protection and conversion technology, particularly in the form of UPSs, has long been used in commercial applications, but take-up in industrial applications has, to date, been relatively slow. This relatively slow uptake is due, in part, to a limited understanding of the ‘ilities’ (‘Availability’, ‘Reliability’, ‘Scalability’, ‘Flexibility’ and ‘Maintainability’), commonly associated with modular technology and how the various ‘ilities’ complement each other. In this, the third of five articles, David Bond, Managing Director at Benning Power Electronics (UK) Ltd, explains scalability in the context of the increasingly important and popular modular technology and discusses how scalability can be used to optimise total cost of ownership (TCO).