Overview

Integrity of supply is a key business objective for the Electricity Supply Industry.

Transmission and Distribution

Transmission and Distribution Network Operators are under pressure to improve integrity in order to increase efficiency and to reduce CML (customer minutes lost). Many Network Operators have already made significant gains by reducing direct workforce and extending plant life. This makes further improvement hard to achieve.

Highly Critical Industrial Processes

For critical industries the impact of plant failure is more immediate. Process industries with long and complicated production cycles are particularly vulnerable. Loss of electricity supply leads to disruption of delivery schedules, increased costs and consequential loss of profit.

Safety is also a concern in critical industries where loss of supply means reliance on secondary sources and increased risk. This is particularly the case in hospitals, where patient safety is at risk. In the transport industry, as well as the effect on safety, there is a disruption of passenger flow, with consequential loss of revenue.

In many cases failure of electrical equipment can be predicted. This is increasingly the case towards the end of the equipment’s design life, when failure relates to ageing of installed plant. A sensible approach to risk reduction is to split the work into three phases:

The Plant review and initial monitoring done in phases 1 and 2 serve to define the problem to be addressed by on-line monitoring. At the end of these phases we have an identified list of critical circuits and equipment.

In phase 3, the IPEC monitoring equipment, the database and the Analysis Software are used to measure and analyse the magnitude and location of the problem. This may be on individual cables, switchgear or transformers, or may mean monitoring a complete sub-station.