Abstract:
Power plant facilities located in remote and difficult to access regions often experience significant production losses due to failures, inaccurate
remanufacturing, maintenance activities in addition to prolonged lead time delays while procuring critical spares. This is especially the case given
unanticipated power plant failures which could portend significant power generation losses besides outages that could lead to significant societal
disruptions, for instance, off grid hospital facilities. This study uses a discrete event simulation model to analyze the effect of remanufacturing
and maintenance as part of circular economy strategies, on power plant availability and maintenance time. The proposed study is demonstrated
through the use case of a thermal power plant located in a remote region, where findings suggest replacing components upon failure has the most
significant impact and effect on system availability as well as maintenance time. Moreover, a reduction of mean time before Overhaul (MTBO)
seems to lengthen the component¶VXVDJH-life, hence reduces the maintenance time, and at the same time, increases the system availability. Reuse
activity also yields a better mean time to recovery (MTTR), while repair has the highest amongst the evaluated recovery strategies. The study
adds value by developing a framework, further applying a simulation modelling approach for evaluating the effects of remanufacturing and
maintenance strategies on plant availability.