>> “Things are going to break,” she said. “We have an aging fleet that’s being run harder than it’s ever been run.”
>> Also See: Texas Confident Stressed Grid Will Hold Up Amid Summer Heat
Seems to me that one statement is rooted in experience, science and measurable facts, while the other is nonsense.
Do you have insider maintenance knowledge or is this a hunch? How many fluid samples have you sent to the lab?
Big machines are thermally designed to run at 100%. Oil and lube can be stretched for the proper economic incentive.
You need to stop the machines to measure critical parts are in good shape. You need to change consumables too.
And some controls are by law every X hours of operation.
In Texas?
Schedule your downtime or your equipment will do it for you.
The conclusion that something will break just because it’s been run harder than ever is not based on “science and measurable facts”. Either the plants an grid are within their performance envelopes or they aren’t. These things are over provisioned precisely for these scenarios.
A meaningful statement would have been based on how close to design capacity they are at. Previous usage is completely irrelevant.
It's clear a lot of people in this thread have no exposure to operations.