Better Than the Standard

A defec­tive insu­la­tor in high-volt­age appli­ca­tions can quick­ly lead to dis­as­ter. That’s why Rein­hausen Pow­er Com­pos­ites (RPC) relies on the Pega­sus test sys­tem – the only one of its kind in the world and a hun­dred times more accu­rate than the stan­dard requires – to assess the qual­i­ty of its prod­ucts.


As if oper­at­ed by an invis­i­ble hand, the han­dling sys­tem lifts the insu­la­tion tube from the trans­port trol­ley and car­ries it to the clamp­ing device. Once the tube is fixed in place, the rolling shut­ter to the sys­tem, itself about the size of a garage, clos­es and inside, a test pro­gram is ini­ti­at­ed – a sophis­ti­cat­ed pro­gram which per­forms bend­ing, pres­sure, and leak­age tests as spec­i­fied by the soft­ware. The sys­tem is called Pega­sus and it is used to keep a close eye on the qual­i­ty of the glass-fiber rein­forced tubes and com­pos­ite hol­low insu­la­tors in the ReCoTec® range pro­duced at Rein­hausen Pow­er Com­pos­ites (RPC) in the Ger­man city of Regens­burg.

“We’re the only man­u­fac­tur­er in the world with the option to car­ry out rou­tine test­ing with such a high lev­el of accu­ra­cy.“Mar­cus Hart­mann, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at RPC

The whole process is car­ried out almost entire­ly auto­mat­i­cal­ly. The insu­lat­ing tubes are only deliv­ered to cus­tomers or, in the case of type test­ing, released for series pro­duc­tion, if the test results are pos­i­tive. Mar­cus Hart­mann, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at RPC, affirms: “Our insu­la­tors are cor­ner­stones of the high-volt­age indus­try and the reli­a­bil­i­ty of our equip­ment is para­mount. We don’t want to leave a sin­gle thing to chance.”

Averting Disaster

The demands placed on insu­la­tors in high-volt­age appli­ca­tions are enor­mous. If the insu­la­tors are not func­tion­ing cor­rect­ly, the entire pri­ma­ry sub­sta­tion could go up in flames. Entire city dis­tricts would be left with­out elec­tric­i­ty and people’s lives could even be put at risk. Because of this, insu­la­tors have to be built to with­stand not only the decades’ worth of strain that is part and par­cel of every­day grid oper­a­tion, but also nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na such as weath­er­ing and earth­quakes.

This is why the ener­gy indus­try has cre­at­ed stan­dards out­lin­ing the strict require­ments which insu­la­tors must meet. These stan­dards cov­er mechan­i­cal resis­tance, test­ed in bend­ing and pres­sure tests, as well as tight­ness. “What makes Pega­sus so spe­cial is that it com­bines all three test pro­ce­dures in one run,” explains Hart­mann.

The vac­u­um cham­ber forms the heart of the Pega­sus sys­tem. This is where the tight­ness of the insu­lat­ing tubes is put to the test. This aspect is espe­cial­ly impor­tant, as the insu­la­tors are fre­quent­ly filled with gas or oil which must not be allowed to escape under any cir­cum­stances. The test is cru­cial to ensure the safe­ty of the prod­uct. “For us, it there­fore was­n’t enough to sim­ply meet the require­ments of the stan­dards – we want­ed to sur­pass them,” says Hart­mann. That’s why RPC opt­ed for an extreme­ly sen­si­tive test pro­ce­dure in which the insu­la­tor is filled with heli­um while it is in the vac­u­um.

Three in One Go

The Pega­sus test sys­tem enables Rein­hausen Pow­er Com­pos­ites (RPC) to car­ry out both type and series test­ing for insu­la­tors up to five meters in length. The fol­low­ing tests are car­ried out auto­mat­i­cal­ly in one go:

  • Bend test­ing up to 100 kN
  • Pres­sure test­ing with heli­um up to 25 bar
  • Leak­age test­ing with heli­um

More infor­ma­tion on RPC’s insu­la­tors is avail­able here.

Fine­ly tuned sen­sors are then able to detect any tiny mol­e­cules of the noble gas that escape as a result of leak­ages. “The norm states that an insu­la­tor with a leak­age rate of 10 ‑4 mbar*l/sec is tight. We, on the oth­er hand, guar­an­tee a tight­ness of 10 ‑6 mbar*l/sec. That’s a hun­dred times more accu­rate!” Once the test is com­plete, the heli­um is recov­ered via the pump sta­tion, first by being dis­charged into a bal­loon with a capac­i­ty of 40 cubic meters and then being recom­pressed using a com­pres­sor.

Intelligent Test Procedure

Anoth­er chal­lenge to con­tend with dur­ing test­ing is the fact that not all insu­la­tors are the same. Each cus­tomer has their own spe­cif­ic require­ments. While the mechan­i­cal load capac­i­ty might be the top pri­or­i­ty for one cus­tomer, for anoth­er tight­ness might be para­mount. “We man­u­fac­ture our insu­la­tors accord­ing to our cus­tomers’ needs, but that means we also have to adjust our test para­me­ters to match these indi­vid­ual require­ments,” explains Hart­mann.

Pega­sus can do this auto­mat­i­cal­ly: So that the sys­tem knows what to do, it com­mu­ni­cates via data trans­fer with SAP, which is where all the required para­me­ters are stored. The test results are stored in an SQL data­base and are avail­able for sta­tis­ti­cal eval­u­a­tions. Hart­mann is proud of the Pega­sus sys­tem: “It’s the only sys­tem of its kind in the entire world that can per­form tests with such a high lev­el of accu­ra­cy.”


YOUR CONTACT

If you have any ques­tions about prod­ucts and test pro­ce­dures used at RPC,
please con­tact Mar­cus Hart­mann:
M.Hartmann@reinhausen.com


Share with your network!


Leave a Reply

Never miss an issue again!

Click here to subscribe for free.