Increased temperature as a common cause of energy interruption
One of the most common reasons for energy interruptions and primary cause of electric arc incidents is increasing temperature in a defective connection. As the equipment ages, defective electrical connections on low/medium voltage equipment can increase - studies show that poorly kept equipment has 62% more chances to fail.
Until recently, “best practice” accepts or the only one that increases equipment reliability has been a preventive maintenance program in the form of periodic thermal image inspections. They are usually annual and usually use a combination of an infrared thermal image camera and a thermal window.
However, although this is an evolutionary step towards reactive maintenance, there is still a very significant “performance gap” among the perceived levels of protection compared to the actual level of risk mitigation obtained from a maintenance approach Preventive.
Predictive maintenance
Predictive Maintenance (PDM) is the application of proactive and data maintenance techniques, designed to evaluate the status of the equipment to determine when the repair should be performed.jection
To plan corrective maintenance before a failure of an electrical asset, predictive maintenance software employs data science and predictive analysis to predict potential failures and defects. The goal is to schedule maintenance when it is more practical and economical, maximizing the life of the equipment, while preventing that the equipment is compromised, as well as limiting the contact of staff with committed assets.
The basic structure of a predictive maintenance solution usually consists of various components, a decision support system or platform (or DSS) with data collection, storage and processing, assessment of assets integrity, prognosis and conditions monitoring.
Preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance (MP) is a maintenance form that regularly checks equipment and other assets to reduce the risk of failure and optimize working conditions.
This proactive maintenance strategy is time -based, also known as strategic maintenance, and includes planned maintenance that can be annual, quarterly or monthly to streamline planning and implementation. This is usually organized with the aid of a computerized maintenance management system, also known as CMMS software, to avoid machine stops and extend asset life.
Operating an asset until it breaks can cost a company up to ten times more in repairs and productivity loss than it would cost a company with a planned preventive maintenance policy.
Difference between preventive and predictive maintenance
The difference between preventive and predictive maintenance is that preventive is routine maintenance or inspection, programmed at regular intervals, regardless of equipment condition. This often impacts unnecessary costs, while predictive maintenance is only scheduled as needed, based on the condition of active active in real time. Predictive maintenance, therefore, reduces labor costs and time of operational inactivity, while increasing safety, removing people from risky places and increasing the life of the asset.
Although factuals, critical issues that create this performance gap situation are often not fully explained or understood.
They include:
- Workers are still exposed to risks;
- Annual thermography represents an inspection of less than 1% of operating time, leaving 99% dependent on luck;
- The moment of inspection often does not reflect the most critical operating electrical charges;
- The measurement depends on the skills of the equipment and the operator to correlate with the true internal temperature (so it will never be of uniform quality);
- The data remain independent and unintegrated rather than dynamically integrated information;
- Infrared transmission rates through a thermal window ”can deteriorate significantly over time, affecting the accuracy of temperature readings.
Thermographic camera manufacturers state that two requirements are essential to obtain accurate temperature data when performing an electrical equipment thermal inspection.
The first is that the camera must have a direct line of view for the conductor being inspected (the thermal windows have variable and deteriorating levels of infrared transmission, so not meeting this requirement).
The second requirement is that the conductor that is being photographed thermally operates with a minimum load of 40% of the projected load. For example, a 3K -designed circuit should operate at a minimum of 1.5ka during an inspection. This is rarely observed by those who perform thermal inspections of electrical equipment and are not known to most equipment owners/operators.
The gap in maintenance performance
Fortunately, there is now a way to reduce this “performance gap” and improve protection monitoring and continually analyzing temperature data, not only identifying, but proactively predicting problems resulting from defective connections. Intelligent innovative software such as Bridgemeter® has evolved to provide the “next technological step” of predictive maintenance.
With 24 × 7 real -time monitoring, predictive analysis can detect approximately 70% more failure symptoms before failures actually occur than periodic inspection.
This is achieved through permanently installed temperature sensors, designed specifically for thermal monitoring of electrical frames, CCM and transformers.
Predictive technology with the use of thermal sensors solves many of the critical problems identified above and fills the performance gap, providing greater safety, more reliable operational activity time and better integrity of assets.
The growing global search for IoT devices and related products is also feeding the growth of industrial IoT, or IOT, as it is known. This requires that industrial equipment and machines have integrated condition monitoring sensors that acquire 24 × 7 condition data, with internet connection for later analysis and real -time identification of failure conditions. This allows more efficient maintenance practices to be adopted, enabling considerable benefits throughout the equipment's useful life, which can be delivered as part of the Critical Electric Infrastructure IOT/Digitization. These benefits of IOT include:
- Elimination of unnecessary inspections and their associated costs;
- Reduction of preventive maintenance to comply with the equipment manual “as required”;
- Reduction of inactivity time costs associated with periodic inspection/maintenance;
- Reduction of replacement replacement costs and associated inactivity time through greater early detection of failure symptoms;
- Increased safety by removing people from risky places;
- Identification of better performance equipment for future acquisition decisions;
- Opex economy due to reducing continuous periodic inspection/maintenance costs.
This rapid inspection change to continuous asset monitoring is necessary as a larger number of global companies adopt digitization strategies, in the search for greater competitiveness in this new digital world.
The modernization of electric infrastructure to include innovative technologies, such as 24 × 7 real -time intelligent monitoring, will increase the safety, performance and life of the electric infrastructure through predictive analysis. No matter what type of electrical installation you keep, a continuous and digital monitoring approach will provide the most economical and efficient way to ensure that your electrical equipment is protected and operating all the time.
Finally, the most opportune moment to install predictive monitoring sensors is during programmed maintenance stops, thus updating the equipment and allowing you to obtain all the benefits of predictive maintenance through the intelligent IIiot, effectively closing the “performance gap” that exists with preventive maintenance.
Modernize its electric infrastructure with Above-Net® Bridgemeter®. Schedule an appointment today and optimize your equipment with our state -of -the -art predictive monitoring:
With information: Exertherm
