AHM on Transformers

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

Pragma provides an engineering support service that provides:

Guaranteed Transformer availability
Extended asset life
Reduced business interruption risk
Increased cost transparency and predictability
Lower business risk
Reduced insurance premium and faster claims turnaround

All electricity users and plant owners are dependent on their transformers to keep their plants or networks in operation. Transformer failures can be catastrophic and dangerous and lead to a loss of revenue, products, service delivery, income, brand equity and much more.

By continuously monitoring these assets you have factual and in-time information about their condition and are able to make quick decisions and take actions, to ensure their availability.

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

Transformer

Industries we serve

Utilities
Generation and Transmission
Mining
Manufacturing
Renewables

Your challenges

Transformer reliability

Degradation or contamination of oil insulation
Overheating and thermal degradation
Low insulation and cooling oil levels
On load tap changer failure

Transformer risk

Business interruption and long repair/replacement lead time in case of failure
Potential for catastrophic and harmful failures
Lack of redundancy or mitigation plans

Impact vs Probability

Complacency due to low frequency and high reliability of transformers
Limited consideration for the high impact in case of failure

Impact of poor maintenance practices

Statutory compliance work not tracked
Remedial work not managed
Maintenance work quality not confirmed
Reduced asset reliability

Our value

Improved business sustainability

Risk of failure reduced due to early detection of potential faults
Business interruption risk mitigated through in-time monitoring and expert reliability advise
Accurate and reliable information delivered to the right people, in the right format in-time

Transformer availability assurance

Transformer health parameters monitored and early warning provided
Reactive and predictive maintenance work identified, planned and executed by expert field technicians
Contractors dispatched to perform work under agreed SLA
Maintenance work inspected to ensure quality
Effective management and control of maintenance contractors
Critical information provided to enable agile decision making
Advanced diagnostics on-site to support fault finding efforts and take corrective action before failure

Improved cost transparency

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

Best-in-class monitoring solution

Intelligent Gateway that bridges the gap between edge devices and the cloud
Web-based IIoT monitoring platform for easy and remote access to condition parameters

RCM based maintenance plans

Pragma Focus on Transformers

What we monitor

Temperatures

Top & Bottom Oil
Cooler Oil / Water
Winding Hot Spots
Ambient
Terminations

Bushing Health Tan Delta and Capacitance

Partial Discharge

Cooling System

Fan/Pump Current
Status Inputs
Loss of Power

System Health Monitoring

Internal Self-Checking

Voltage Regulation

Tap Changer

Position
Operation Counters
Temperature Differential
Drive Motor Monitoring
Contact Wear
Reversing Switch Operation

On Line DGA and Winding Temperature

DGA and Moisture
Fiber Optic Temperature

Harmonics and Fault Occurrences

Load monitoring

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.