OREANDA-NEWS. September 20, 2012. One of the main objectives of power engineers during the autumn-winter operation period is maximum reduction of time (up to two hours) of the elimination of the consequences of technological failures. This task to power engineers was set by the Russian President Vladimir Putin during a recent meeting with Chairman of the Management Board of FGC UES Oleg Budargin.

To this end, experts of IDGC of Centre had already taken a number of system-level measures. One of them — improving complex diagnostics of electrical equipment.

For the organization of a unified system of technical diagnostics of electric grid facilities professionals of IDGC of Centre did a lot of work. Power engineers ensured the implementation of innovative diagnostics methods and the development of effective methods, supporting decision making on the timing and amount of impact on the equipment based on the evaluation of its technical condition and the risk of loss of its functionality, and the implementation of unified information and diagnostics systems for rapid access to information on the technical condition of the equipment.

For the diagnostics of electrical substations and fault location on the cable lines IDGC of Centre uses mobile electrotechnical laboratories (ETL). Electrical laboratories are designed to test transformer and distribution substations of 35-110 kV, to measure dielectric loss tangent and capacitance in the direct and inverse schemes, to measure current and no-load losses at reduced voltage, short circuit resistance, transformation ratio and winding connection group and etc.

To determine the technical condition of overhead lines modern instruments are used. For example, to measure the dimensions of overhead lines, the width of the ROW and height of the tree power engineers of IDGC of Centre use the device Vertex, to detect defects of contact connections they use the thermal imager.

Modern device MRU-105 is used to measure the resistance of grounding devices and soil resistivity. The device allows to determine the section with highly corrosive soil to be protected from corrosion, for the calculation of the cathodic and galvanic protection.

The condition of windings is determined by the device IDAX. The unique information received by the device allows to evaluate the status of oil and solid insulation. Diagnostics crews also have milliohmmeter ISO-1, the device PCV M7 that defines technical condition of switches. The condition of power transformers is determined by the liquid chromatograph Milichrome 6. The breakdown condition of the oil is determined by the device SCAT M100, the device AZHZ 975 is used to control mechanical impurities in transformer oil.

A unique device in the practice of professionals of diagnostics of IDGC of Centre is a portable analyzer of dissolved gases Transport X, which is able in the field for a few minutes to give accurate and reliable results.

All of this equipment can first make routine diagnostics in preparation for the autumn-winter period. Diagnostics data for each facility (commissioned in the year, test results, data on emergency outages, etc.) were entered into the corporate information resource management system based on the platform SAP ERP. The system has allowed to make automatic evaluation of the technical condition of the equipment, to calculate the health index of grid elements and power supply facilities, in compliance with which has been the repair program and preparation program for the autumn-winter period was developed.