Measuring Better

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Taiwan Pow­er Com­pa­ny (TPC) thought they were doing every­thing right. The state-owned util­i­ty, which was found­ed in 1946, equipped more than 2,000 trans­form­ers with online DGA sen­sors. For the per­sons respon­si­ble, it was clear that con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing of the trans­former oil would allow them to detect impend­ing dam­age to the wind­ings ear­ly on. They assumed that this step had made their trans­form­ers a great deal safer. But this was not the case.

Kent Yang, Depart­ment Man­ag­er at For­tune Elec­tric, a man­u­fac­tur­er of pow­er and dis­tri­b­u­tion trans­form­ers in Tai­wan which also helps TPC to equip its trans­form­ers, explains: “The sen­sor dis­plays quick­ly start­ed break­ing, false alarms and oth­er mal­func­tions were hap­pen­ing every day, and main­te­nance costs sky-rock­et­ed.” In short, the “smoke gas detec­tors” were use­less.

More certainty

As the errors were pil­ing up, TPC attend­ed a prod­uct pre­sen­ta­tion where they learned about the new sen­sor that MESSKO had launched on the mar­ket, MSENSE® DGA 3. This sen­sor detects the hydro­gen con­tent (which indi cates ther­mal and elec­tri­cal faults in the wind­ings), the car­bon monox­ide con­tent (which is an indi­ca­tor for the wear lev­els of the insu­lat­ing paper), and the mois­ture con­tent in the oil. This makes it pos­si­ble to draw con­clu­sions about the oil qual­i­ty. And that is exact­ly what TPC need­ed.

“TPC was now able to detect changes in indi­vid­ual gas­es much more accu­rate­ly. Fur­ther­more, the soft­ware pro­vides TPC with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the his­toric devel­op­ment of the mea­sured val­ues.”Ian Chen, Project man­ag­er at For­tune Elec­tric

Because the pre­vi­ous­ly installed sen­sors had only mea­sured the total dis­solved com­bustible gas (TDCG), thus giv­ing an impre­cise pic­ture. And so curios­i­ty had been piqued, the will to change man­u­fac­tur­ers was present, and after suc­cess­ful cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by TPC, For­tune Elec­tric could start with the instal­la­tion. For­tune Elec­tric pur­chased MSENS® DGA from MESSKO and sold the devices to TPC. The respon­si­ble project man­ag­er at For­tune Elec­tric, Ian Chen, said of the results, “TPC was now able to detect changes in indi­vid­ual gas­es much more accu­rate­ly. Fur­ther­more, the soft­ware pro­vides TPC with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the his­toric devel­op­ment of the mea­sured val­ues.”

In the mean­time, with the help of For­tune Elec­tric, TPC has already equipped 200 trans­form­ers with MSENSE® DGA 3. Replac­ing the sen­sors is extreme­ly sim­ple because it is pos­si­ble dur­ing active oper­a­tion. “We received excel­lent sup­port through­out the entire project. Rein­hausen helped us and TPC with the con­fig­u­ra­tion and cal­i­bra­tion and per­formed tests. They also trained For­tune Elec­tric and TPC employ­ees,” says Ian Chen.

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