Protecting critical assets with wireless monitoring

With ever-increasing power demands, electric utilities find themselves in a race to maximize the reliability of their electrical assets while minimizing downtime. As a critical junction point in power distribution, medium-voltage switchgear represents one of the most vulnerable links in the power grid. These valuable assets are subject to overheating due to excessive loads, normal wear and tear, and challenging environmental conditions. Left unattended, these conditions can lead to failures resulting in costly damage to switchgear and surrounding equipment, power production loss, and in extreme cases, severe injury or death. Condition-based monitoring has been in practice for some time, most often achieved through periodic manual inspection while the switchgear is powered down. Implementing continuous monitoring gives electric utilities the ability to collect data generated during the switchgear’s normal operating conditions, thereby providing awareness to problems in real time. Real-time trending during full load electrical stresses, vibration, insulation breakdown, and environmental influences, quickly provides insight into the health of the utility’s asset. When performing continuous monitoring, it is not critical to identify the exact location of degradation, but to understand the trend of the defect over time. Possessing the ability to monitor and trend the most common failure modes allows for planned maintenance events to assess the health of the asset over time versus running the risk of asset failure resulting in unplanned downtime. Common failure modes include excessive temperature, partial discharge (PD), and humidity (refer to “Common Failure Modes” sidebar).