Need for stringent control quality guarantees

Present control quality guarantees do not seem to be motivated by economic considerations, and the actual values vary over a wide range even for comparable plant conditions. The individual requirements are specified in a manner which precludes their economic evaluation, and, with the exception of steady state operation, are based on noise-free input signals. In order to make the guarantees economically more relevant, it is necessary to modify them so as to express the total economic effect of control quality and control reliability on plant service life, plant efficiency, auxiliary power consumption, etc. The mathematical methods needed for the involved engineering and probabilistic calculations are sufficiently well documented, but the supporting data may not be always on hand. (orig.)