Techniques for Improved Predictive Maintenance Testing of Industrial Power Systems

Periodic testing of industrial power system components can result in the early detection of problems, allowing corrective actions to be taken before a failure occurs. The positive impact of this on system availability and safety is beginning to be appreciated by both maintenance and production personnel in the mining industry. A variety of procedures are available for periodic testing, although they have some inherent limitations which must be recognized if a meaningful interpretation of the test data is to be achieved. These tests, and their inherent limitations, are reviewed in this paper; appropriate applications for these tests are suggested, and the use of negative-sequence monitoring, as an inexpensive but powerful detector of incipient failure in industrial power systems is proposed.