About this Technical Webinar:
Synopsis | Shunt reactor switching is one of the most arduous circuit breaker applications due to the regular switching duty – often daily – and the high voltages impressed across the interrupters following current interruption. This presentation will describe a novel monitoring approach that allows assessment of the health of the switchgear during in-service operations. The monitoring equipment, which can be set up within ~2 hours without an outage, is left in situ to monitor the circuit breaker for a minimum of 5 operations. The circuit breaker performance is assessed by the analysis of radio frequency, electric-field, vibration and trip/close coil signals recorded from the vicinity of the circuit breaker during scheduled switching operations. These signals give a unique insight into the circuit breaker behaviour and allow assessments of the following features: controlled switching relay, mechanism/drive train, interrupters, grading capacitor health and damping. The presentation will describe the results of a 2 year trial on 6 separate circuit breakers switching 200 MVAr shunt reactors. During the trial the monitoring system detected issues on 4 of the 6 circuit breakers monitored including late re-ignitions, controlled switching relay problems, interrupter issues and drive train defects. All of the issues detected are explained and accompanied by relevant waveforms. Two of the circuit breakers monitored were removed from service for refurbishment as a result of the trial. On a strip down of one of these, puncture holes in the interrupter casing were discovered which correlates with data recorded by the monitoring system which indicated uncontrolled arcing. The trial has been very successful and supports a condition/performance based intervention regime which leads to better use of system resources and greater HV equipment availability for transmission systems migrating towards net zero.
Presenter: Phil Moore
Phil Moore trained with GEC Measurements, Stafford and worked as a Relay Development Engineer before becoming a University academic specialising in the field of power engineering. He has worked at the City University, London, the University of Bath and, most recently, as Professor of Electrical Plant and Diagnostics at the University of Strathclyde. His research interests focussed on the radio frequency emissions from energised electricity supply equipment. He has run research projects funded by the EPSRC, MBDA, the Radio Communications Agency, National Grid and EPRI. In 2007 he was a founding member of Elimpus Ltd, which specialises in the condition monitoring of electrical distribution and transmission equipment. He has been the full-time Technical Director of Elimpus since 2009.
