Legacy turbine supervisory systems, although often still mechanically sound and robust, frequently lack the advanced monitoring capabilities required to ensure optimum performance, reliability, and safety in modern production and power-generation environments. A cost-effective approach is to integrate upgraded, next-generation monitoring technologies into your legacy turbine setup. This article explores several strategies for enhancing older turbine infrastructure with modern turbine supervisory, vibration monitoring, and seismic monitoring systems.
Many legacy turbines—particularly in the power-generation sector—operate under high pressures and elevated mechanical stress, resulting in an increased risk of critical failures. Retrofitting your system with an API 670-compliant monitoring solution, such as the Sentry G3 from Sensonics, provides advanced speed monitoring, vibration analysis, and improved protection against potential faults. This integration also ensures access to accurate, high-resolution performance data so that safety thresholds can be effectively maintained.
Older supervisory and monitoring units often suffer reduced reliability due to ageing electronic components—most notably aluminium electrolytic capacitors, which are among the most common points of failure.
Failures in power-supply or filtering capacitors can lead to:
While ceramic and film capacitors typically age more slowly, electrolytic capacitors have a finite lifespan and usually require proactive replacement to maintain long-term reliability. Other components—such as resistors, diodes, and transistors—can also degrade over time, though their ageing failure rate is generally much lower.
Older turbines may lack integrated mounting points for modern sensors, making direct retrofits more complex. While casing-mounted vibration sensors can often be installed via drill/tap/spot-face methods—or with welded/screwed mounting pads—non-contact sensors such as eddy-current proximity probes can be significantly more demanding to install if suitable mounting provisions do not already exist.
Proximity probe installations may require:
For this reason, retrofits often aim to match existing probe thread sizes and lengths when replacing older systems to avoid intrusive casing modifications.
Capacitive air-gap sensors, on the other hand:
This makes them a practical option in situations where shaft-relative measurement is not required.
Modern monitoring platforms enable a scalable approach to turbine protection. Systems such as Sensonics’ SentryCMS allow operators to begin with a minimal set of vibration, temperature, or overspeed channels and progressively expand coverage as operational needs evolve.
In addition to these core measurements, modern systems support more advanced supervisory parameters such as:
These metrics are essential for understanding rotor behaviour, thermal growth, and long-term machine alignment.
A modular turbine supervisory system—such as the Sentry G3—is an effective upgrade path for legacy turbines that lack modern displacement, speed, and vibration monitoring capabilities. Modular architectures allow channel-by-channel expansion and configuration, enabling operators to update instrumentation progressively without wholesale replacement.
This flexibility is particularly valuable in industries such as mineral extraction and metal processing, where turbines operate under heavy and variable loads.
Get in touch with Sensonics today to learn more about our advanced turbine supervisory systems and support services.
Image source: Canva