Transformer Maintenance Strategy Optimisation

With an in-depth knowledge of the various functional demands and failure modes that can arise in different operating environments, TxMonitor® can validate, extend or develop maintenance strategies that support the overall Asset Management framework of your organisation.

Many modern maintenance systems are built around the preventive maintenance idea. In essence, assets are intervened whether they actually require the intervention or not, based on a site-wide analysis and a typification of the assets life-cycle behaviour and expectations.

On the other hand, on-condition tasks are defined as “identifiable physical conditions” which indicate that a functional failure is about to occur or is in the process of occurring”.

Rather than fixing a time-based set of maintenance tasks based on a (not always evidence based) failure probability, on-condition maintenance tasks aim at detecting potential failures.

We call the systematic mechanism by which these potential failures are identified as an “On-Condition Asset Maintenance” strategy.

The application of this strategy carries added value to the organisation because the condition monitoring activities are normally less intrusive that traditional preventive maintenance activities. This has positive benefits in reducing the overall maintenance costs and improving the safety of maintainers and operators.

The implementation of this process is a continuous and self-reinforcing virtuous cycle, in which the maintainers are able to focus their energies in those asset that most require their attention. A visual depiction of this concept is shown below.

 

The main goals of a maintenance optimisation project include:

  • Understand the type of transformers that comprise the HV power system of an operation
  • Determine what maintenance tasks are being applied to each type of transformers
  • Conduct a review of all condition data to fully understand the condition of the assets
  • Apply FMECA mapping to identify improvement opportunities in existing maintenance tactics
  • Implement a robust and easy-to-use system to determine and rank the health of the transformer population moving forward

To accomplish these goals, a methodology that combines practices from Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM), Preventive Maintenance Optimisation (PMO) and our own Asset Health Index System (AHIS) are utilised.

 
 
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