AHM on MV Switchgear

Want to mitigate the risks posed by your MV Switchgear failing and leaving your plant without power when you need it most?

Pragma provides an engineering support service that provides:

Guaranteed MV Switchgear availability
Extended asset life
Reduced business interruption risk
Increased cost transparency and predictability
Lower health, safety and environmental risk
Reduced insurance premiums and faster claims processing

Large industrial, mining, petrochemical, utilities and municipal owners are dependent on the reliability and availability of their MV switchgear to distribute and supply their plants or customers with electricity without interruption and to protect the network in case of faults. If MV switchgear fails, it can be catastrophic and lead to a loss of life, business and service delivery interruption, reduced income, brand equity and much more.

By continuously monitoring these assets you have factual and real-time information about the health of these assets and are able to make quick decisions and take action.

For us, it is more than just monitoring

Pragma and Martec, our condition monitoring specialist company, follow an end-to-end implementation and operation’s approach to asset health management that includes a structured framework with asset type-specific features.

Visit the Asset Health Management overview page for more detail.

Asset Health Managment - Implementation and Operational Model

This model illustrates our full service.

Our scope

Assets we cover

MV switchgear

Industries we serve

Manufacturing
Mining
Petrochemical
Public Sector, Metros, Municipalities, Water boards
Energy generation, transmission and distribution (incl. Renewable Energy)

Your challenges

Asset Reliability Risk

Catastrophic failures including fires, gas emissions and explosions
Consequential damage to equipment controlled by switchgear is potentially significant
Business interruption is a major consequence of switchgear failure

Impact of poor maintenance practices

Statutory compliance work not recorded
Remedial work not managed
Maintenance work quality not ensured
Reduced asset reliability

Statutory and Safety Risk

Significant risk human life in case of catastrophic failure or failure to function as electrical circuit protection and isolation
Management of statutory requirements, incl. having panels and protection schemes verified, maintained and tested annually or in accordance to network regulations
Poor compliance to regulatory or risk requirements (also for insurance)

Our value

Improved business sustainability

Efficient implementation of digitalised maintenance processes
Reduced business interruption risk through reliance on switchgear expert monitoring and advice
Critical information provided to enable agile decision making

Switchgear availability assurance

Continuous trending of asset condition parameters, incl. partial discharge, temperature, humidity, load and power quality
Advanced diagnostics on-site to support fault finding efforts and take corrective action before failure
Reactive and predictive maintenance work identified, planned and executed by expert field technicians
Maintenance work inspected to ensure quality
RCM based maintenance plans

Best-in-class monitoring solution

Supply and installation of industry-leading monitoring technology
Intelligent Gateway that bridges the gap between edge devices and the cloud irrespective of interfaces and protocols
Use of cutting edge analytics to process asset condition data
Web-based IoT monitoring platform for easy and remote access to condition parameters

Improved cost transparency

Maintenance spend planned, benchmarked and controlled
Asset life-cycle cost managed based on reliable information
Reduced fixed-interval maintenance – only act when required

Pragma Focus on Switchgear

What we monitor

Temperatures

Busbar
Breaker
Cable Terminations

Partial Discharge

Busbar
Circuit Breaker
Cables Terminations
Cable and Joints
Connected equipment

System Health Monitoring

Threshold and Alarm limits internal Self-Checking, with email and SMS communication

In-time Condition Monitoring

Monitoring, Trending and Alarms
PD (electrical discharges)
Load conditions
Switching Cycles/ Operations
Diagnostics and Expert recommendation
Confirmation after restorative action
Web-based access to information and reports

Projects and success stories

Rectifying production losses caused by a furnace line boosting transformer and dry type reactors

This real-time condition monitoring project brought health measures of critical assets within the client’s plant into a single interactive real-time operational dashboard and workflow environment.

Asset performance managment to mitigate loss of product on Shell's retail sites

This work-in-progress project is geared to use IIoT sensor technologies to monitor asset performance and identify the potential of loss of product in underground storage tanks, fuel lines and dispensers on the forecourt and during refuelling.

Improved facilities management with the use of IIoT sensor technologies

Pragma transformed the management of their Cape Town office using IIoT sensor technologies to monitor, analyse, predict and prevent failures and take timeous corrective action.