Experiences and lessons from an anomaly root cause analysis in a large district cooling plant

The Theory of Constraints was used as a method in a root cause analysis (RCA) to identify system performance bottlenecks, wherein the constraint with the strongest correlation with system performance is identified as the bottleneck. In the present study, this method was applied in a large district cooling plant to diagnose steam absorption chillers’ performance anomalies including performance deterioration, spikes, large variation, etc. Many root causes were identified through a ten months’ continuous diagnosis, such as drastic reduction in chilled water flow rate, faulty steam control valve, cooling demand reduction, etc. More than 30 anomalies were diagnosed and more than 80% diagnosis accuracy was achieved. The diagnosis results were verified by the plant operator, which proved the effectiveness of the Theory of Constraints as a method for root cause analysis in diagnosing anomalies in district cooling plant operations. It was however discovered that even though the operational component identification accuracy was high, the determination of the actual root cause still presents lots of challenges, due to the large set of domain knowledge and operation conditions required. A knowledge-based supporting tool may be needed as part of the RCA to facilitate a speedy and complete analysis to enable these anomalies to be resolved.