Electrical & Power Systems

Power System Analysis

• ETAP

  Load flow, short circuit, coordination, arc flash to IEEE 1584, motor starting, grounding and harmonic study.

• SKM PowerTools

  Industrial electrical studies, coordination and incident energy analysis.

• EasyPower

  Independent verification of coordination, short circuit and arc flash results on a second recognised platform.

Event and Disturbance Evidence

• Relay event records, SEL AcSELerator and COMTRADE analysis

  Reconstruction of trip sequence, fault type, fault current and protection response to the millisecond.

• Power quality analyzers, including Fluke and Dranetz instruments

  Voltage sag, transient and harmonic evidence associated with equipment damage claims.

• Doble and Megger test sets

  Insulation resistance, power factor, turns ratio and winding condition testing on transformers, motors and cables.

• Dissolved gas analysis and infrared thermography

  Transformer condition assessment and connection or termination heating evidence.

Switchgear, Breaker and SF6 Condition Evidence

• Circuit breaker timing and travel analysis

  Contact travel, operating and clearing time measured against the manufacturer curve to establish whether the breaker cleared the fault as designed.

• Contact resistance and dynamic contact resistance testing

  Micro-ohm measurement of bolted joints, bus connections and breaker contacts where heating is suspected as the initiating condition.

• Protective relay secondary injection testing

  Omicron and Doble class injection to verify as found settings, pickup, timing and logic against the coordination study.

• Offline and handheld partial discharge survey, including ultrasonic and TEV instruments

  Detection of insulation degradation, tracking and corona in energised medium voltage switchgear before an arc path forms.

• SF6 gas density, moisture and purity analysis

  Gas condition and leak history in gas insulated switchgear, including density lockout records that may predate the event.

• SF6 decomposition by-product analysis for SO2, SOF2 and HF

  Chemical signature of internal arcing used to confirm that an arc occurred inside a sealed compartment and to estimate its severity.

• SF6 recovery, handling and emissions accounting to IEC 62271 and IEEE C37.122 practice

  Documented gas recovery after an internal arc, with the released mass quantified for environmental reporting.

Underground Cable Systems and Accessories

• Time domain reflectometry, impulse and bridge fault location

  Location of a fault along an underground transmission or distribution route before excavation, including discrimination between cable length and accessory.

• Sheath fault location and oversheath DC testing

  Verification that the external protective and water barrier system is intact after installation, repair or backfilling.

• Mobile series resonant AC withstand test system

  After installation acceptance testing of extruded cable systems to IEC 60840 practice at 115 kV class, where very low frequency testing is not the appropriate instrument.

• Distributed and local partial discharge measurement on cable systems

  Detection of localised dielectric activity at joints and terminations under AC voltage, where installation defects in field assembled accessories typically appear.

• Soil and backfill thermal resistivity probe and laboratory testing

  Field and laboratory measurement to IEEE 442 practice to establish whether the buried environment supports the ampacity and rating assumptions under IEC 60287.

• Sheath bonding, link box and sheath voltage limiter verification

  Continuity, circulating current and bonding configuration checks where sheath heating or bonding error is a candidate cause or a post repair risk.

• Distributed temperature sensing on cable routes

  Thermal profile of the circuit along its length, used to identify hot sections, dried backfill and repaired segments running above the adjacent cable.

• Cable locator, as built and GIS route reconciliation with ground penetrating radar

  Confirmation that the installed route matches the record relied on by excavation and locate processes, which is central to third party damage causation.

• Jointing dimensional control, calibrated preparation tooling and hold point records

  Demonstration of field workmanship against AEIC CG4 and manufacturer qualified procedures after a joint is closed and backfilled.

Root Cause and Analytical Method

• Fault tree analysis and event and causal factor charting

  Ordering of protection, control and human actions into a single defensible sequence.

• Apollo Root Cause Analysis and TapRooT

  Cause determination for switchgear faults, transformer losses and unplanned outages under claim.

Monitoring, Sensors and Predictive Analytics

• Online partial discharge and thermal monitoring

  Continuous evidence of insulation degradation in switchgear, cables and transformers.

• AI camera and thermal monitoring

  Automated watch on substations and switchrooms where access is restricted or hazardous.

Remote and Visual Access

• Drone thermography of lines, structures and yards

  Overhead and elevated electrical asset survey without an outage.

• Borescope inspection of enclosures and terminations

  Internal arc damage and contamination evidence before equipment is cleaned.

BlackOut Power / TerraTolga Proprietary Capability

• Engineering Records Intelligence ↗

  Single line diagrams, protection settings, test reports and maintenance records reconciled against the event.

• TerraTolga PDF / Vault Compare ↗

  Comparison of protection setting sheets and drawing revisions to establish what was changed before the event.

• Criticality ↗

  Ranking of electrical assets by outage consequence for maintenance and capital planning.