Track: Reliability and Maintenance

Abstract

The energy sector is key to fulfilling the social and economic needs of any state. To fulfill these needs, the energy sector should adopt the state of the art maintenance practices. This is to ensure the reliability and availability of power plant assets, thereby enhancing productivity and safety. This paper is aimed at identifying, analyzing, and presenting maintenance strategies and/or approaches adopted in South African power plants. South Africa has relationships with various countries across the globe, hence they are paying attention to its energy and other sectors. Power plants have been struggling for over a decade to have a stable power supply system. One of the critical issues is maintenance. Efforts have been made to enhance the maintenance of power plants. The study adopted a narrative literature review of various scholarly writings to identify and assess the extent to which maintenance strategies are used in power plants. There are a number of maintenance strategies that have been adopted in South African power plants, such as preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, corrective maintenance, computerized maintenance management system, total production maintenance, and human factors in maintenance. This study will be helpful to researchers and maintenance practitioners cussing in the maintenance of power plants, especially in the South African context and developing countries.