Business Chief USA September 2019

just monitor it until it is taken offline
permanently? Because within our
industry in Nova Scotia and in some of
the North American utilities we have
the ultimate aim of reducing our coal
fleet,” he explains.
In working towards that, MacNeil
highlights the need to be systematically
flexible as the use of assets change.
“Where some units would have been
base-loaded in the past, now they’re
cycling, so you cannot maintain them in
the same way. They have new failure
mechanisms that need to be considered,
and therefore your maintenance
strategy and activities need to change.”
By taking a holistic approach to asset
management, unlike more traditional
environments where each plant makes
its own decisions, NSP are able to make
portfolio decisions. “We’re confident our
investment dollars are going where they
need to be,” says MacNeil. “We’re meeting
the mission of each unit… It might be a
base-load unit, a two-shifting or a flex
unit. It might be a unit that needs to
retire in a short amount of time. This
process of detailed risk understanding
enables us to function in those variety
of realities for various generating
assets, and therefore we’re hitting the
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