IPEC Ltd is at the forefront of Electricity Asset Management using Partial Discharge Monitoring for incipient fault detection and location.
Reliable incipient fault detection coupled with precise fault location are key to successful change. Proactive management is essential to achieve the objective - integrity of supply.

Distribution Network Operators are under increasing pressure to improve efficiency of supply by reducing
CML’s (customer minutes lost) and CI’s (customer interruptions).

Following privatisation of European electricity supply markets, many Network Operators made significant ‘quick win’ shareholder value gains by reducing direct workforce numbers and postponing replacement programmes to extend plant life.
However these savings also greatly increase the risk of future failure – much of the network knowledge
resided with the people who ran the system. This makes further improvement hard to achieve.
For critical industries the impact of plant failure is more immediate.

Process industries with long and complicated production cycles are particularly vulnerable. Loss of electricity supply leads to disruption of delivery schedules, increased costs and consequential loss of profit. Safety is also a concern in critical industries where loss of supply means reliance on secondary sources and increased risk.
This is particularly the case in hospitals, where patient safety is at risk. In the transport industry, as well as the effect on safety, there is a disruption of passenger flow, with consequential loss of revenue.

In many cases failure of electrical equipment can be predicted.

This is increasingly the case towards the end of the equipment’s design life, when failure relates to ageing of installed plant.
On-line continuous monitoring of critical plant is the key to increasing security of supply and extending the working life of existing plant. The appearance and development of Partial Discharge in plant is a key indicator of future failure.