Projects
Projects: Projects for Investigator |
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| Reference Number | NIA_NGET0186 | |
| Title | Condition Monitoring of Circuit Breakers - iCASE | |
| Status | Completed | |
| Energy Categories | Other Power and Storage Technologies(Electricity transmission and distribution) 100%; | |
| Research Types | Applied Research and Development 100% | |
| Science and Technology Fields | ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) 100% | |
| UKERC Cross Cutting Characterisation | Not Cross-cutting 100% | |
| Principal Investigator |
Project Contact No email address given National Grid Electricity Transmission |
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| Award Type | Network Innovation Allowance | |
| Funding Source | Ofgem | |
| Start Date | 01 June 2016 | |
| End Date | 01 June 2018 | |
| Duration | 24 months | |
| Total Grant Value | £169,500 | |
| Industrial Sectors | Power | |
| Region | London | |
| Programme | Network Innovation Allowance | |
| Investigators | Principal Investigator | Project Contact , National Grid Electricity Transmission (100.000%) |
| Web Site | http://www.smarternetworks.org/project/NIA_NGET0186 |
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| Objectives | Develop a monitoring system that requires a limited number of non-intrusive sensors in order to provide a holistic view of switchgear condition. The aim is to provide the industry with an improved ability to understand the asset health of circuit breakers. If successful, this would increase network availability and decreases the risk of outages and failures on the assets. The success delivery of the key project outputs, as listed in the Scope. Including the provision of additional data analysis and a final report with recommendations for viability of deployment onto the transmission network. A non-invasive solution (sensor, hardware, and software) that can be adopted for wider use the network. | |
| Abstract | The principle of condition monitoring is to keep up to date on the condition of an asset in order to mitigate maintenance outages and asset failure of High Voltage circuit breakers. Conventional condition monitoring systems involve temporarily embedding sensors to the circuit breaker in order to capture direct performance measurements such as contact travel, gas and hydraulic pressures. During this activity, the asset must be removed from service to ensure safe working conditions. This can result in relatively long outages, which are difficult to secure and impact on network availability, costs and resources. For enclosed circuit breakers in insulation, such as oil or SF6, with multiple breaks in series there is a requirement for increased outage times, with similar impacts on the network as mentioned above. Whilst conventional sensors offer the asset manager a measure of performance, they do not always detect defect symptoms present in a circuit breaker which may lead to an impact on the function or the integrity of the circuit breaker. At present, there is no cost effective, non-intrusive condition monitoring system for high voltage circuit breakers that can indicate a range of possible faults during normal switching operations. This project will look at the development of a new sensor system, and associated diagnostic software, to gain an indication of the health index of the different circuit breakers using non-intrusive methods. The non-intrusive system would require an operation rather than a maintenance system outage. In order to achieve this aim, a new approach to conventional measurement and condition monitoring must be developed and tested on a selected population of switchgear. The approach for this project is to research and develop a monitoring system that would utilise a limited number of non-intrusive acoustic sensors that will provide a holistic view of switchgear condition. It is anticipated that this new monitoring system would enable emerging faults to be detected; which previously haven’t been detected at such an early state when using conventional methods (via the chromatic method). Once the new system is developed it will firstly be used in the lab based testing before being deployed onsite at various suitable substations. The working environment trials will monitor the static and dynamic operational behaviour of switchgear. The chromatic methodology has been used successfully elsewhere in the utility sector, such as condition monitoring of tap changers/selectors within distribution networks. The chromatic method has proven to be particularly successful in extracting latent information from complex signals. It can detect known faults but also small changes related to the emergence of faults which statistically have a low probability of occurring. This project is interested in taking the lessons learned in other sectors to develop the chromatic methodology in the area of circuit breaker recognition. The method necessary to develop the methodology into a circuit breaker monitoring systems includes the following: Sensor selection to enable non-intrusive measurement. Build and test a condition monitoring systems in the lab using gas filled switchgear. Induce faults on a model circuit breaker, under laboratory conditions, to assess the sensitivity of the approach to detect and discriminate single faults as well as multiple failure modes. Deployment of condition monitoring systems for continuous monitoring of high voltage circuit breakers at selected substations that have circuit breakers that meet the projects needs and minimise impact to normal operations. With some monitoring systems being installed temporarily and others on a longer term basis. These units will not interfere with the operation of these breakers. Apply chromaticity principles to monitor the condition of high voltage circuit breakers to detect obvious (e.g. reduced hydraulic pressure etc) and emergent conditions that could lead to an operational fault. Analysis software to automatically process signals detected by the monitoring.Note : Project Documents may be available via the ENA Smarter Networks Portal using the Website link above | |
| Publications | (none) |
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| Final Report | (none) |
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| Added to Database | 10/07/18 | |
