Performance monitoring and analysis for power plants

A system for performance monitoring of power plants, the system comprising:

• a plurality of power plants respectively owned and operated by a plurality of customers;
• a monitoring center;
• at least one of the customers and the monitoring center including a plurality of analytic algorithms configured to automate performance anomaly detection, alarming, analytics and prognosis;
• and
• a secured network by which on-site monitoring (OSM) data generated at each of the plurality of the power plants is receivable by the monitoring center,
• the monitoring center being configured to analyze the OSM data along with site specific data for each respective power plant in accordance with the plurality of analytics algorithms to derive trends, to take action with respect to each respective power plant in accordance with changes and abnormalities indicated by the derived trends and to be supportive of a web portal broadcast over the secured network by which each of the plurality of the customers accesses the OSM data and the derived trends.

A method of performance monitoring of power plants, the method comprising:

• establishing a secured network by which on-site monitoring (OSM) data generated at each of a plurality of power plants is receivable by a monitoring center;
• analyzing the OSM data along with site specific data for each respective power plant;
• deriving trends from the analysis of the OSM data and the site specific data in accordance with a plurality of analytics algorithms stored at the monitoring center or at a customer site to derive trends;
• and
• taking action, at the monitoring center, with respect to each respective power plant in accordance with changes and abnormalities indicated by the derived trends.