Tunning-electric implements this refurbishment model in a comprehensive manner, incorporating work teams in a sustainable and resilient change management, thus reducing costs in mining operations and other sectors.
Broadly speaking, a Retrofit project is a plan to recondition a system in order to improve its operation and efficiency, incorporating new technologies. Tunning conceives it as an integral intervention that goes beyond the mere modernization of a machine, involving the entire organization.
Thus, when thinking about the design of a new machine, they also analyze the systems it will impact and the management of all the people involved in the process, that is to say, they detonate and accompany a change management at different levels.
Retrofit, in general, is implemented in the operations of large machinery, such as furnaces and mills, whose control systems may be obsolete, even though the machine is not, “in these cases we change the control system to a modern and updated one, increasing the useful life of the equipment, reducing the preventive and corrective maintenance it will need in the future, incorporating advanced control modules and improving the process information”, says Aldo Di Biase, manager of Tunning’s Smart Grids division.
Consequently, Retrofit translates into lower costs and higher revenues for the company. Thus, for example, when applied to an electrical substation, maintenance will be carried out on the high voltage power equipment, replacing the control systems and their protections, “we would replace the wiring based on many copper wires by an optical fiber, simplifying its design and commissioning” exemplifies Di Biase, remarking that this would increase the reliability of the system, reducing its maintenance needs, allowing the incorporation of more advanced functions and communication with central monitoring and control systems.
With the above, in the event of a fault or unexpected event, the reaction will be faster and more limited, affecting only a reduced area and preventing it from being transferred to other substation facilities or parts of the network. An injection of resilience to the system that is more like a “lion’s paw” than a “cat’s paw”.
