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.