by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Nov 6, 2021 | Electrical Reliability, RAM Tools & Methods
The term predictive maintenance (PdM) has different meanings depending on your background and industry. Within the plant-management world, it means that if your maintenance personnel tell you that something will survive 100 hours, it will operate 100 hours, then fail...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Oct 23, 2021 | Asset Management, Electrical Reliability
As explained in Part II of this series (see links to all parts below), Electrical Signature Analysis (ESA) is used in a manner similar to vibration analysis for defects in transformers, while the electrical data provides information on other conditions surrounding the...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Oct 17, 2021 | Electrical Reliability, Motors & Drives
This week, we are taking a slight detour from our ongoing multi-part discussion on Electrical Signature Analysis (ESA) and transformers. This is because the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) has just released the second report (Volume 2) of its study of electric motor...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Oct 10, 2021 | Asset Management, Electrical Reliability
Popular topics around the renewable-energy community include interaction of inverter-connected power sources to the grid and the impact on components such as transformers (in particular, step-up transformers). One of the concerns with wind and solar-based step-up...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Oct 3, 2021 | Asset Management, Electrical Reliability
Among the challenges of aging electrical-transmission and -distribution infrastructure in the United States is the shortage of all transformer types. In addition, the use of traditional, complex monitoring methods for trending and prognostics in existing equipment...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Sep 26, 2021 | Asset Management, Electrical Reliability
Considerable attention has been given to the application of Electrical and Motor Current Signature Analyses (ESA and MCSA) in motors and generators. But little in the way of research has been published on the use of ESA with transformers. From an operational...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Sep 19, 2021 | Asset Management, Electrical Reliability
This week’s article concludes our seven-part series. In Parts V and VI (see links below), we developed the classification and Remaining Useful Life (RUL) models that we would use in our Machine Learning project. The final step in developing our tool is to...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Sep 12, 2021 | Asset Management, Electrical Reliability
Up until now, we’ve focused on just using raw electric-motor data in this Machine Learning series (see article links to below). That includes moving from working through the information to classifying different types of faults with it. The aim, in effect, has...
by Jim Seffrin, CMRP | Sep 5, 2021 | Electrical Reliability, IR Thermography, RAM Tools & Methods
Statistically, overloaded circuits are the second most common cause of exceptions found during infrared inspections of electrical systems. Although overloads are quite common, they can be tricky to accurately diagnose. As electrical current flows through a...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Sep 5, 2021 | Asset Management, Electrical Reliability
In Part IV of this series (link below), we determined how to pre-process data for our example Machine Learning (ML) project. Here, we discuss development of data representing defective conditions if the real-world type isn’t available. Beware, though: This task...
