Reliant Energy Bolsters ''Best-In-Class'' Maintenance Strategy with Fleet-wide Addition of SmartSignal EPI*Center(TM)
CHICAGO--Feb. 2, 20061, 2006--| EPI*Center to Support Plant Operations in Improving Equipment Performance |
SmartSignal announced an agreement with Reliant Energy, Inc., to deploy SmartSignal's EPI*Center(TM) business-intelligence solution across units representing 15,700 megawatts of generating-fleet capacity. This fleet-wide initiative is designed to reduce maintenance costs, fuel consumption, and operational costs--while improving availability, revenues, and margins. SmartSignal will be used by Reliant personnel to monitor both rotating and non-rotating equipment across Reliant's fossil-fuel, combined-cycle, and combustion-turbine plants.
Reliant, one of the largest independent power producers in the nation, initially deployed SmartSignal's EPI*Center at its Bighorn Combined Cycle Plant located in Nevada. The success of this deployment reinforced Reliant's decision to rollout EPI*Center nationwide. At Bighorn, EPI*Center was proven to provide greater insight into equipment performance than standard condition-monitoring tools.
"The implementation of SmartSignal's EPI*Center solution is another example of how Reliant is working to improve plant-operating performance," said Dave Freysinger, Senior Vice President of generation operations. "Deploying EPI*Center is part of Reliant's 'Best-In-Class' maintenance- practices initiative, which will ultimately provide benefits to customers and investors by ensuring reliable and cost-effective generation of electricity."
SmartSignal's EPI*Center continuously inspects key aspects of equipment health to provide early warning of potential problems. When critical equipment fails to perform to expectations, it sends shockwaves throughout an organization. Looking at equipment from a reliability, availability, efficiency, and compliance perspective, SmartSignal's solution enables timely action resulting in increased uptime and reduced operating costs.
"Our customers have told us that SmartSignal has helped them to increase equipment availability while reducing operations and maintenance costs," said Jim Gagnard, President and CEO of SmartSignal. "By implementing EPI*Center, Reliant will be able to better support plant personnel in achieving 'best-in-class' performance."
About SmartSignal
SmartSignal Corporation is the leader in equipment-performance-improvement solutions, with 40 issued or licensed patents pending/owned and with broad foreign coverage. SmartSignal's EPI*Center(TM) business-intelligence solution helps companies gain unprecedented insight into the health of critical business equipment. SmartSignal's clients in power generation represent over 350,000 megawatts of power; other SmartSignal clients include industry leaders in refining, pipelines, petrochemicals, airlines, mining, and process manufacturing. SmartSignal has been acclaimed widely in the press, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Newsweek, Investor's Business Daily, and many more. In both 2004 and 2005, SmartSignal was a finalist for the prestigious Platts Global Energy Award in the "Commercial Technology of the Year" category. SmartSignal, along with SAP and its client, Delta Air Lines, also won the APICS "Technology Partnership Award of Excellence" in 2004. For more information, visit www.smartsignal.com.