Health index calculation of electrical equipments using DiagConsole software

During operational life, electrical equipment from the Electrical Grid is subjected to failure due to external causes (lightning strikes, over voltages) and internal causes (ageing of their insulation systems). Condition assessment of this equipment, in order to avoid premature failure, is a very important topic due to reliability and investments issues. The health index is being used by many utilities due to the fact that it shows the global degradation condition of an equipment so that the beneficiary can choose between the type of maintenance or replacement operations. This paper presents a software (DiagConsole), designed to assess the condition of all the electrical equipment from the Romanian Electrical Grid by calculating their health index. The structure of DiagConsole (offline and online monitoring and diagnosis) is presented, in particular for power transformers. The final part of the paper presents a case study, done on a power transformer for which the health index is calculated using DiagConsole. Based on the health index, the condition of the transformer is evaluated.