Kenter, part of Alliander, the largest electricity grid operator in the Netherlands, installs, leases, and maintains reliable electricity supply for a wide range of businesses, from small family-run bakeries to electric vehicle manufacturers and large multinational chemical companies. Kenter offers innovative electricity supply and metering solutions to help businesses optimize their energy consumption. The company's team of 300 maintenance specialists has significantly improved the speed and accuracy of scheduled maintenance inspections thanks to an innovative handheld instrument: the Fluke ii910 precision acoustic camera.
Maintenance program management
Kenter provides 24/7 maintenance for the equipment necessary to ensure a safe and reliable supply to its customers worldwide. This service includes scheduled maintenance cycles, typically performed every three, five, six, or ten years. During scheduled maintenance, Kenter coordinates a series of tasks to minimize disruption to operations, including partial discharge checks.
Partial discharges typically originate from a small fault that can result in thousands of smaller, repetitive electrical discharges. This phenomenon, which often occurs near the insulation of equipment components such as high-voltage lines, transformers, turbines, busbars, and inside electrical cabinets, can disrupt the power supply due to mechanical, thermal, and chemical damage to insulators and conductors.
Fast and accurate inspections
The Fluke™ ii910 Precision Acoustic Camera enables maintenance engineers to quickly inspect a customer's electrical assets from a safe distance while they remain operational, and immediately identify areas affected by partial discharge. The image can then be rapidly analyzed to determine the type of partial discharge, allowing the team to perform the appropriate maintenance. Users benefit from the instrument's ease of use, speed, and accuracy, while customers can continue operations during maintenance inspections without taking the plant offline.
According to Martin Damen, Technical Engineering Director at Kenter, the Fluke ii910 Precision Acoustic Camera has revolutionized maintenance inspections and is an essential tool for maintenance.
“Having the ability to inspect an entire facility at once represents a real game-changer because of the speed it offers us to identify a partial discharge problem,” he stated.
Dirk Kwik, Kenter's Maintenance Team Director, agrees: “Our engineers focus on identifying problems and carrying out maintenance as quickly and safely as possible to cause minimal disruption to our customers' businesses, thus avoiding costly, unplanned downtime.”
Advantages in the application
A recent inspection at a customer's facility using Fluke's ii910 precision acoustic camera indicated a partial discharge occurring in the high-voltage switches. This had gone undetected by staff, as no characteristic smell or sound was noted during the interim inspection, and no malfunction issues had been reported. The customer was also reluctant to shut down operations for oscilloscope evaluation. The failure to identify this problem could have significant consequences due to the risk of high-voltage switch failure. According to Damen, the cost of replacing the high-voltage switches could be in the order of €30,000, not including the potential reputational damage to the customer, who operates on a tight timeline, resulting from the shutdown.
The ii910 camera has helped Kenter's management team leverage its workforce more effectively. The company already has more than 18 engineers trained to use the ii910 and is providing online training to the engineering team nationwide. The complexity of using an oscilloscope required a significantly longer training period for engineers to accurately detect partial discharges.
Innovative partial discharge detection
The ii910 precision acoustic camera was developed to help engineers quickly identify and locate electrical discharges. This innovative detection instrument features a 7-inch LCD touchscreen that overlays a SoundMap™ onto a visual image to rapidly identify discharges or leaks within the 2-100 kHz frequency range. The ii910 offers up to five minutes of video recording and a minimum battery life of six hours.
“The Fluke ii910 precision acoustic camera was developed with the end user in mind,” says Tako Feron, Product Manager for Acoustic Cameras at Fluke Corporation.
“A working group of electrical maintenance professionals from several companies helped test and provide feedback on the product during its development. This feedback was invaluable in helping us address some of the challenges they face daily, and we continue to work with the group to add new features to the software.”.
