Related to 3: IN the similar line when coal quality deteriorates [in 500MW subcritical] and coal flow becomes as high as 400 tons / hour, ESP hopper ash evacuation poses a great challenge. If not taken care at appropriate level, the ESP ash level reaches at a very dangerous level and the subsequent manual dumping and cleaning becomes a mess. Although, there are ash level monitoring switches [ALI] installed in the ESP hoppers but they are highly unreliable besides the level in-between the ALIs are never convincing. To tackle the problem in the coming days we are going to take up an ‘audio analytic’ machine learning project wherein by hammering & subsequently analyzing the sound we will make the best guess of hopper level. Small microprocessor based solenoid [hammer] coupled with covered microphones will pick up sound level from along the walls [from top to bottom] of the ESP hopper and the same will be compared with a trained model and the inference will be made.