System for optimizing and maintaining power plant performance

A method for pinpointing a component of a power plant that is need of maintenance, comprising the steps of:

• a) providing a power plant through a conduit circuit of which motive fluid flows so as to be in heat exchanger relation with a heated source fluid at each of a plurality of power plant components, wherein said conduit circuit comprises a plurality of conduits arranged such that a first conduit extends from an outlet of a first component to an inlet of a second component and a second conduit extends from an outlet of the second component to an inlet of a third component;
• b) deploying a plurality of embedded sensors and environmental sensors, each of said embedded sensors being embedded in a different power plant location and adapted to sense a corresponding real-time power plant parameter and each of said environmental sensors adapted to sense ambient conditions in the vicinity of the power plant;
• c) integrating a thermodynamic calculation module configured with an algorithm representative of operation of each of specified components of the power plant with a power plant wide or a system-specific value-related configuration diagram;
• d) for the first component, comparing real-time sensed data received from associated embedded sensors deployed at its outlet with generated ambient-dependent calculated data related to one or more selected value indicators provided with said configuration diagram at the outlet of the first component based on data sensed by corresponding environmental sensors and on said thermodynamic calculation module;
• e) if a difference between the real-time sensed data and the generated ambient-dependent calculated data at the outlet of the first component is greater than a predetermined threshold for a given value indicator and there is a doubt as to whether the first component or the second component is malfunctioning since both the first and second components are connected to the first conduit which is in fluid communication with the outlet of the first component, repeating step d for the inlet and outlet of the second component;
• and
• f) if a difference between the real-time sensed data and the generated ambient-dependent calculated data at the inlet and outlet of the second component is less than another predetermined threshold for a given value indicator, it is determined that the first component is malfunctioning and the second component is not malfunctioning.