Meet the Browns

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41° 17’ 15” S 174° 46’ 34” E

TTem­per­a­ture-wise this is one of the more com­fort­able jobs for Alan and Grant Brown. They are work­ing in a pri­ma­ry sub­sta­tion of the nation­al net­work oper­a­tor Trans­pow­er in the mild cli­mate of New Zealand’s cap­i­tal, Welling­ton. At oth­er times, the two ser­vice spe­cial­ists han­dle the main­te­nance of on-load tap-chang­ers in the tor­rid heat of the Aus­tralian Out­back, where the ther- mome­ter has been known to read 60 degrees Cel­sius. Then, on oth­er days, they work in regions with the same lev­el of swel­ter­ing heat: in Papua New Guinea, Van­u­atu, New Cale­do­nia or Tahi­ti. In total, five ser­vice tech­ni­cians at Rein­hausen Aus­tralia ser­vice this giant area of oper­a­tion with eight dif­fer­ent time zones. “We are on site with the cus-tomer for about three weeks of each month,” says Alan.

PREMIUM SERVICE PROVIDERS IN ACTION

The father-son team has three days to com­plete the work in Welling­ton. For nor­mal main­te­nance work this would be a con­sid­ered a gen­er­ous time­frame, but this job is more com­plex: they have to con­duct a rebuild of three sin­gle-phase on-load tap-chang­ers in the three trans­form­ers of the pri­ma­ry sub­sta­tion. There­fore, two ser­vice tech­ni­cians work­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly are need­ed to com­plete the job on time. “Many cus­tomers require short down times dur­ing main­te­nance work” says 22-year-old Grant. He has been work­ing with Rein­hausen Aus­tralia for five years, becom­ing cer­ti­fied as a Pre­mi­um Ser­vice Provider after a four-week train­ing course in Regens­burg in 2016.

His father Alan is an old hand in the ser­vice busi­ness. He has spe­cial­ized in main­te­nance and repair work, retro­fitting as well as diag­nos­tics and analy­sis of trans­form­ers with Rein­hausen Aus­tralia for 18 years. “Trans­pow­er noticed some anom­alies in a mea­sure­ment on the trans­form­ers. We car­ried out an inspec­tion, but couldn’t find any irreg­u­lar­i­ties. Nonethe­less, we rec­om­mend­ed that the on-load tap-chang­ers and the motor-dri­ve units be refur­bished and brought up-to-date since they had been in con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion since 1975,” says Alan.

Grant sum­ma­rizes the process: “The three trans­form­ers each con­tain an old­er style M‑type on-load tap-chang­er which we need to rebuild and bring up to mod­ern stan­dards. For this process, we must com­plete­ly dis­man­tle the divert­er switch units into all indi­vid­ual parts and then clean and inspect all mechan­i­cal and insu­lat­ing com­po­nents such as the tran­si­tion resis­tors. For this job, we will be installing a new ener­gy accu­mu­la­tor sys­tem and exchang­ing con­tacts and oth­er crit­i­cal com­po­nents and then rebuild­ing the divert­er-switch unit. When that’s done, main­te­nance for the motor-dri­ve unit and the dri­ve shafts are next in line.” Some 40 kilo­grams of spare parts per on-load tap-chang­er were shipped to Welling­ton in advance for this pur­pose.

The young tech­ni­cian has already neat­ly laid out the tap-chang­er com­po­nents on a work­bench togeth­er with the oil com­part­ment. He care­ful­ly replaces the cop­per con­tacts and exchanges the old flex­i­ble leads with new ones. This is work that requires a fine touch. “It feels like there are a mil­lion parts in front of you, but there is a check­list process that helps make sure you don’t for­get any­thing. The tap chang­er is a high-risk com­po­nent. If it doesn’t func­tion, the trans­former doesn’t either,” says Alan, who is now mon­i­tor­ing the removal of the divert­er-switch insert from the oil com­part­ment of the next trans­former. “There is a great deal of respon­si­bil­i­ty with this work. But when the over­hauled trans­former is switched back on and func­tions, you know you’ve done your job right,” explains the expe­ri­enced ser­vice tech­ni­cian.

NO FEAR OF ERRORS

Nei­ther of the two expe­ri­ences ner­vous­ness or fear of errors. “They sim­ply don’t arise, thanks to thor­ough, con­tin­u­ous train­ing where what we learn becomes ingrained in us. You have your own rou­tine and you know you’ve checked every­thing,” says Grant. It is not often that father and son are on the same assign­ment since ser­vice tech­ni­cians are often on site alone. They are only paired up when the job is espe­cial­ly exten­sive. “I see an enor­mous ben­e­fit from such assign­ments,” says Grant, “Expe­ri­ence is very impor­tant in this job.”

On the last work day, Grant, secured by a har­ness and firm­ly foot­ed on top of the trans­former – assists and mon­i­tors to ensure that the last of the three refur­bished divert­er-switch inserts is low­ered into the trans­former cor­rect­ly. The tech­ni­cians refur­bish and main­tain the motor-dri­ve units and the dri­ve shaft on the final day as well. The last screw has been put into place mere moments before Alan cranks the con­nec­tion between the dri­ve unit and the tap chang­ers on each trans­former in order to syn­chro­nize them so that there is less than a hand crank turn between them.

After­wards, he con­ducts yet anoth­er mechan­i­cal test which runs through all 13 posi­tions. “All done,” says Alan to Grant, as the young tech­ni­cian packs up his equip­ment. Father and son are already look­ing for­ward to a relax­ing week­end in Syd­ney. On Mon­day, the two have more work wait­ing for them. Next up is an assign­ment in Tas­ma­nia.