Turbine Diagnostic Services, Inc.

Overview

Turbine Diagnostic Services (TDS) was founded in 1998 as an independent contractor servicing the utility, municipal, and industrial power generation sectors. TDS strives to provide expert engineering and experienced labor in order to meet all the needs of our clients’ large and medium steam and gas mechanical drive turbine generators.

We work closely with our customers during normal operating periods, forced outages, and planned outages. TDS supplies clients with full service coverage, planning, scheduling, parts procurement, labor, job management, and/or emergency assistance with mechanical or control failure forced outages.

Over the past five years, our staff has doubled as we continue to grow and expand our capabilities. TDS employs an expert and experienced workforce of startup engineers, mechanical turbine engineers, mechanical turbine representatives, generator engineers/specialists, excitation control engineers, turbine control engineers, control & vibration technicians, and turbine millwrights. TDS provides the quality, experience, and expertise of a large corporation or original equipment manufacturer (OEM), while still providing the personable, one-on-one service and dedication of a small firm.

Our team of engineers provides a complete line of turbine generator related services, with customer access to all levels of management and supervision. When dialing our emergency service line, TDS customers are routed directly to our on-call engineer who responds immediately to emergency forced outage needs on a 24-hour basis.

Services - ISI

TDS provides a number of services in addition to emergency and contract mechanical maintenance and repair. The TDS In Service Inspection (ISI) for steam and gas turbine generator equipment is conducted at normal high load steady state operation. It evaluates the condition of the turbine, generator, and subsystems while conducting thermodynamic performance and vibration analyses with long term tracking of all the operational parameters available. Turbine lube oil analysis is also available by request.

When the ISI is completed, TDS provides clients with an exceptionally thorough and detailed report with unit-specific data sheets describing the conditions at the time of inspection as well as unit design parameters. From this information, TDS makes specific recommendations about immediate repair and long term maintenance. TDS knows that performing periodic diagnostics, correcting impending problems, and ensuring correct maintenance planning and execution for our customers increases their unit reliability and availability and lowers their costs. Our ISI program is recognized by the insurance industry as an acceptable regular inspection, and our documentation of unit performance may justify extension of outage cycles when appropriate, based on the current performance and operational trends of the machine.

Services - Controls

In addition, TDS performs controls inspections, troubleshooting, and calibration for mechanical hydraulic controls (MHC), analog electro hydraulic control (EHC), digital EHC, and turbine supervisory instrumentation (TSI) systems. We provide new control system options for upgrades and retrofit projects and assist with startup after the installation of new equipment.

Services - Parts

For our customers with systems which require out-of-production parts, TDS has an in-house stock of various used, obsolete, and hard to find replacement components. These parts were removed and replaced as part of turbine control, exciter control, and/or protective relay upgrades.

Services – Vibration

TDS specializes in vibration analysis and multi-plane balancing of multi-shaft turbine generators with state of the art diagnostic equipment. If a client’s unit has no permanent vibration monitoring equipment, we provide our own temporary instrumentation. Our extensive experience in performing field vibration analyses and in balancing a wide range of steam and gas turbine and generator equipment of all sizes makes Turbine Diagnostic Services the most technically competent field balancing organization in the world.

Services – Lube Oil

Turbine lube oil analysis is available as part of an ISI. Independently, TDS performs lube oil filtration which removes particulate and water contamination. The clean oil is processed back into the client’s equipment, often eliminating the need to purchase new lube oil and minimizing our customers’ unit down time and operating costs. TDS has a portable 100gpm TurboToc ® oil filtration system built into a 20’ shipping container. It is set up with all wiring and supplies needed to conduct supplementary oil filtration whether the turbine generator is on line or off line.

Services – Generators

When it comes to servicing our clients’ air-cooled and hydrogen-cooled generators, a TDS mechanical services team disassembles the generator, inspects the generator mechanical components, reassembles, and aligns the generator. As well, a TDS generator-specialist engineer conducts an electrical inspection and tests the generator stator, generator field, and the excitation system.

TurboNet Dash 1 ® Control System

In our continuing efforts improve our ability to meet our clients’ power generation needs, TDS has developed the TurboNet Dash 1®, an integrated turbine generator and balance of plant (BOP) distributed control system (DCS). In designing and manufacturing the TurboNet Dash 1®, TDS has made every effort to maximize its performance and provide customer technicians and engineers with the best system for operating and troubleshooting their turbine generator systems.

Programming code developed by experienced TDS engineers provides a straightforward human-machine interface (HMI) and can provide multiple HMI and engineering work space (EWS) locations. With the optional integrated data storage historian, operators can quickly call up short-term or long-term performance data trends. The HMI/EWS/historian code is built on Linux Red Hat 7.2, and because of this it is more reliable than any Windows based system. The control processors operate on LynxOS ® RTOS (real-time operating system), providing a stable and highly reliable control platform.

TDS has developed custom Input/Output (I/O) modules to perform all the functions that cannot be performed by conventional programmable logic controller (PLC) I/O modules. This brings a fully digital interface to the vibration monitoring, speed/overspeed input, SOE (sequence of events @1ms), and fuel/steam hydraulic control valve closed loop valve position (EHC) modules. It has triple redundant speed input and backup overspeed protection (On Line BOST testing capability), and can be customized with an integrated digital excitation voltage regulator (Basler), digital generator protection (single/redundant or SIM/SEQ), and Auto/Manual Sync/Sync Check.

About 80% of the hardware components of the TurboNet Dash 1® are commercially available off the shelf, making it less expensive, faster, and easier for our customers to maintain and repair than completely proprietary OEM systems. TurboNet Dash 1® is the only turbine generator control system in the world that can stand head to head and match or exceed the performance of the current OEM Mark system. Furthermore, TDS supplies the DCS-structured TurboNet Dash 1® at a fraction of the cost of the OEM system.

New Location

TDS is proud to announce that we have moved into our new expanded facility in Odessa, Florida, just north of Tampa. The new building houses our engineering and administrative offices and our new, expanded shop. This location brings our old Odessa office facilities together with the shop and storage facilities of the old Brooksville location.
This new facility provides the additional space required for the further development and manufacturing of the TurboNet DASH 1® control system as its popularity grows. This relocation has significantly streamlined our communications and increased the efficiency of our operations. Currently, we are moving ahead with further work on our facility which will enable us to do in house repairs of large equipment, will improve our response time, and will increase the efficiency of all the services we provide to our clients.