Detecting Partial Discharge In High Voltage Equipment

Posted by adairsawyer on August 28th, 2011

Every child learns at an early age from their parents that going anywhere near a power socket is a very bad idea, due to the large amounts of electricity flowing from the mains and feeding into power sockets in houses throughout the country. Many households make use of a simple cap that fits into a power socket and blocks the holes into which a child might unknowingly stick their fingers, thus insulating children from potentially being harmed by the electricity. The cap is made from plastic or any other material that does not conduct electricity, thus giving it insulating properties. This concept of insulation is applied throughout industries where high voltage equipment is required, such as generators and motors, to both facilitate the working of such equipment and also to protect human operators who work around that equipment. Iris power products that detect partial discharge emanating from the insulation layers on high voltage equipment are designed to help operations monitor the integrity of the insulation on their equipment.

Every so often, however, the insulation on a piece of equipment fails. When the insulation on equipment fails, this means that cracks or gaps appear in the insulation, such that the equipment is no longer completely insulated from the surrounding air, and electricity is escaping into the surrounding environment instead of being completely contained within that piece of equipment. Failure can occur without any warning, and is usually caused by the natural aging process. Insulation inevitably degrades over time, and insulation failures are certainly much more common in older pieces of equipment. When insulation failure does take place with newer equipment, then it is likely caused by the introduction of contaminants or a manufacturing defect that resulted in flaws in the insulation being present right from the very start.

No matter what the initial cause is, however, the results are the same. Insulation can have a variety of consequences that range from annoying but relatively harmless to extremely dangerous. In the best case scenario, an insulation failure will simply result in the shutdown of a piece of equipment, disrupting work but not resulting in any major damage or injuries to workers. In the worst case scenario, however, the interaction of the sparks caused by partial discharges and other substances found in the equipment such as oil can result in major explosions, causing extensive damage to valuable equipment and injuring any human workers in the vicinity.

The key to preventing such catastrophic breakdowns is with monitoring systems such as those available from Iris Power, which provides systems for monitoring both generators as well as motors. With an Iris Power monitoring system in place, an operation that relies heavily on hydro-generators, for example, will not have to deal with insulation failures leading to extensive damage to their generators, which would force them to shut down or reduce power production for the duration of repair or replacement efforts.

An Iris Power partial discharge monitoring system is not so much an expenditure for any operation as an investment that will be repaid many times over the in the form of averted disasters and potential problems that are detected early on and addressed before they can become real problems.

If you are interesting in partial discharge monitoring systems of the type available from Iris Power, then you should definitely pay the Dynamic Ratings website a visit as well. They also number among the top purveyors of such monitoring systems.