Key Technical Performance Indicators for Power Plants

In this chapter, we will underline the importance of the key performance indicators (KPIs) computation for power plants’ management. The main scope of the KPIs is to continuously monitor and improve the business and technological processes. Such indicators show the efficiency of a process or a system in relation with norms, targets or plans. They usually provide investors and stakeholders a better image regarding location, equipment technology, layout and design, solar and wind exposure in case of renewable energy sources and maintenance strategies. We will present the most important KPIs such as energy performance index, compensated performance ratio, power performance index, yield, and performance, and we will compare these KPIs in terms of relevance and propose a set of new KPIs relevant for maintenance activities. We will also present a case study of a business intelligence (BI) dashboard developed for renewable power plant operation in order to analyze the KPIs. The BI solution contains a data level for data management, an analytical model with KPI framework and forecasting methods based on artificial neural networks (ANN) for estimating the generated energy from renewable energy sources and an interactive dashboard for advanced analytics and decision support.