Developing an effective condition based maintenance program for substation equipment

Electric service providers are under continuous pressure to reduce maintenance expenditures while maintaining a high level of component reliability. The current practice of data collection by various operators, work crews, inspectors, and specialized test technicians is accomplished using mostly paper records. This information is stored in many different places throughout the organization. With this setup, it is difficult to effectively determine the health of critical assets and make decisions to correct potential problems. This deficiency has tremendous negative impact on the overall maintenance strategy for assets in the system. An effective condition based maintenance strategy should use all available inspection, diagnostic and testing data; maintenance histories; operator logs; and design data to make timely decisions about operating strategies and maintenance requirements. To accomplish this, a structure is required, which draws electronic data from all the collections sources into a centralized location and enables an integrated condition assessment. Such a system should allow historical data to be readily available and trendable. Rules and algorithms should be available to alarm when various problem conditions exist on the system and notify the appropriate individuals to review and take corrective action. An interface to a work management system would allow the triggering of work orders for the actual execution of the recommended corrective actions. This paper describes an application available over the Internet, that has the functionality described above and enables the implementation of a comprehensive condition based maintenance program. This application helps electric service providers perform the necessary maintenance activities and facilitates justification of maintenance decisions and strategies. We first describe the predominant method of data collection and maintenance strategy decision making and then introduce the characteristics of a successful condition based maintenance program.