Gerd Balzer, Christian Schorn Asset Management for Infrastructure Systems

Annotation

This book offers a broad overview of asset management processes for different utilities, with a special emphasis on energy and water. It provides readers with important practical considerations concerning the development of new competitive structures and procedures for guaranteeing a sufficient supply of energy and water in a regulated environment, using clearly defined technical and economic cornerstones. On the one hand, asset owners expect suitable interests from their investment and business growth; on the other hand, regulators focus more on a reliable and cost-effective customer supply. This book shows how to take into consideration these different perspectives in the process of designing new structures, and how to guarantee organizational transparency. It describes essential principles and boundary conditions for ensuring the optimal use of resources in a network, covering issues relating to equipment service life, IT landscape and computer programs, operational costs management, and investment and maintenance strategies, highlighting their impact on the organization of the company. This thoroughly revised and updated second edition, includes extensive information about IEC standard (IEC/TS 63060), and cover operation research methods focusing on the optimization of the maintenance tasks. Furthermore, a discussion on the political environment has been included, with a special emphasis on the European situation and the "Green Deal": specifically, some measures to cope with the topic of energy transition are presented. Last, but not least, a brand-new chapter on condition assessment has been included.