Wärtsilä sets up support centres for remote monitoring of facilities

Launched a centre in India in Chennai and plans to launch one each in US and Italy

Finnish power sources manufacturer and service provider Wärtsilä is setting up Contract Support Centre with remote monitoring and advisory in various parts of the world. It has set up the second such facility in Chennai, after the launching the first one at Dubai, in United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The facility in Chennai, set in February, this year, is to offer services to the gas fuelled power plants across the world. At present, it is monitoring around 580 mega watt of power generation, including 230 MW in India, 270 MW in Indonesia, 60 MW in Australia and 20 MW in Thailand, said James Rajan, director - service unit (South Asia), India Pvt Ltd.

It is planning to set up such centres, one in US and one in Italy by April, this year. "We are investing significantly into these centres and this is part of our digitisation," he added, refusing to divulge the investment figures.

"This is digitisation of our services in Wärtsilä. These centres will have experts who can monitor the real time data from various power plants and advise the service team on various aspects of the plant," he said

This will help to optimise operation and maintenance, take preventive steps and reduce cost and down time for the customers, while Wärtsilä can overcome the challenge of lack of availability of expertise to offer it's best support to the customers world wide.

The centre in Chennai, which currently handles power plants, may take up monitoring of marine equipment also in future, he said.

The company has delivered and manages a total of around 4 GW of power plants in the country.