Counties Energy

Electrical networks often suffer intermittent faults caused by equipment failure as a result of damage or degradation over time. Faults of this nature would often be difficult to detect and could cause several small to medium outages to the network’s customers. Being unable to detect faulty equipment would cause these troublesome trips to go unremedied for several days or weeks, as it would be impractical or even impossible to have an outage long enough to manually verify the integrity of each asset. In many cases this would only be resolved once the asset has completely failed.

Electrical distributer, Counties Energy, has been trialing the use of the Fluke ii910 Precision Acoustic Imager to assist with reducing outage time caused by permanent faults of an intermittent nature. To assist with finding faults on the company’s high voltage distribution network that would normally be difficult to detect due to their transient nature, Counties Energy is optimising the fault-finding process by using the Fluke ii910 imager to remotely verify the integrity of high voltage insulators on their 11KV to 33 KV lines. This process has the potential to allow field operators to inspect the condition of such insulators without the need for outages that would traditionally be used to enable the operator to visually inspect the insulator by de-energising the line and accessing the equipment from a ladder or elevated work platform (EWP).

Electrical Power Systems depend on Reliability

Counties Energy has supplied power for over 95 years to over 47,000 Installation Control Points (ICPs), including residential homes, farms and businesses in the Southern Auckland and Northern Waikato regions. Counties Energy receives power from the national grid at Bombay, and Glenbrook then transports it to the region’s local people via nine substations and an extensive network of lines, cables and transformers.

Counties Energy strives to provide reliable, safe and sustained energy to their community, and are constantly investigating new and innovative strategies to improve their services and reduce unplanned outages. With the use of highly advanced equipment in combination with trusted fault detection devices and methodologies, Counties Energy are continually improving their services. The Fluke ii910 allows field technicians to efficiently scan potentially faulty equipment without the need for an outage. This enables the rapid survey of equipment including cracked insulators, cable terminations, or surge arrestors that could potentially cause an outage during wet conditions. Once the faulty equipment has been detected it can be replaced ensuring that no further outages occur.

Key areas to scan for partial discharge (PD) include high voltage equipment like insulators, transformers, switchgear, arrestors, busbars, breakers, and high voltage (HV) cables.

Counties Energy Field Services Manager, Johan Roux, said “We continually review our preventative, reactive and routine maintenance programs to maximise efficiency and reduce downtime. New technologies like the Fluke ii910 are a big part of this process”.

Safe and Fast Fault Detection

The Fluke ii910 offers a fault detection distance of up to 120m from the subject, which helps improve the efficiency and safety of inspection routines.

Engineered to locate partial discharge and corona discharge, as well as gas and vacuum leaks, the Fluke ii910 Acoustic Imaging Camera's groundbreaking technology is a cost efficient, safe, effective, and comfortable-to-use tool for teams who inspect and maintain power distribution and industrial high voltage equipment.

Furthermore, the Fluke ii910 is an intuitive and user friendly technology that requires minimal to no technical training for a field maintenance technician to begin using the device to carry out fault detection inspections and/or conduct maintenance on areas where partial discharge has been detected.

Performance the Utilities Industry can Trust

The Fluke ii910 Precision Acoustic Imager is the ideal tool for high voltage electricians, electrical test engineers, and grid maintenance teams that are constantly inspecting and maintaining power distribution and industrial high voltage equipment.

By using a combination of specific microphone positions and a sophisticated algorithm, the Fluke ii910 Precision Acoustic Imager can detect PD from as far as 120m from the subject, allowing technicians to scan various structures from a safe distance. Using the device’s SoundSight™ technology, the Fluke ii910 translates the sounds that it hears into a visual representation so that you can quickly identify and locate problem areas directly from the device’s touchscreen.

Counties Energy field technicians simply point the Fluke ii910 at any structure in the field to detect if there is a potential fault, with the visual interface making analysis simple and effective. With continued use and a growing number of recorded datasets, technicians will be able to continually become better in their predictions.

“As we use Fluke’s ii910 in the field, we will gain a better understanding of the data allowing us to better optimise our maintenance programs. In time, we can compare data and experience from known faults or defects to better target hardware replacements pro-actively. Knowing that you can view the results in real time while adjusting the frequency range is a great benefit of this tool.” said Johan Roux, Counties Energy Field Services Manager.

Traditional fault-finding inspections generally require outages in certain areas within the network to identify defective hardware, such as cracked insulators.

“Typically, locating faults of this nature would require many field technicians and extensive reactive downtime with no power to our customers. The Fluke ii910 locates intermittent faults while the power is on, so defective hardware can be safely pinpointed, potentially reducing the outages our customers experience” said Counties Energy Field Services Manager, Johan Roux.