By Richard Harada

"Automating thermal inspections can greatly reduce the costs to utilities through reduction of travel

while increasing employee safety and the amount and quality of data that is collected."

Infrared technology is widely used by utilities to find heat related anomalies in the electrical system that could indicate potential problems. Portable infrared cameras have been typically used by thermographers to periodically inspect substations and other key areas of the grid. Early detection of excessive heat in the electrical system, or the absence of it in some cases, allows the utility to schedule maintenance and correct issues before an expensive failure occurs. While periodic scanning is useful, it is subject to many changing variabilities including changing environmental and load conditions.

Automating thermal inspections can greatly reduce the costs to utilities through reduction of travel while increasing employee safety and the amount and quality of data that is collected. Furthermore, the data can be made available to SCADA and asset management applications as part of a condition-based maintenance program to increase the utility's bottom line through improved asset life, efficiency and reduced outages.

Automated and remote inspections can lead to more efficiencies and cost savings for utilities by allowing them to go "touchless."

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This article was originally published in the October 2019 issue of the Best Practices: Transformer Testing, Maintenance and Monitoring magazine.

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