Representatives from SDMyers, a transformer management and testing company, recently announced a new working relationship with Camlin Power, a manufacturer of remote transformer monitoring equipment, that will bring the latest 5- and 9- gas monitoring technology to the North American industrial market.

SDMyers will offer the broader range of monitoring equipment to customers as part of its existing Guardian Monitoring™ Service. Since its inception, the Guardian Monitoring Service has consisted of single-gas monitoring systems that alert the company’s transformer specialists when a serious fault is detected in a customer’s transformer.

The expanded offering allows new and existing customers to benefit from the unique products, experience and knowledge of both companies and will meet existing customer needs for both single- and multi-gas dissolved gas analysis (DGA) systems with the seasoned expertise needed to interpret the results. Customers will continue to receive expert review of test results, sophisticated alarm management, and trend analysis from SDMyers, but now with the option for more precise and complete DGA monitoring technology through Camlin.

“Camlin offers the five-gas and nine-gas monitors, which both offer added data that you can’t get from a single-gas monitor,” says Hali Moleski, manager of engineered products at SDMyers. “Couple that with the data being sent to Transformer Dashboard [the company’s web-based transformer management tool] and you really start get the full picture of the health of your transformer.”

Camlin has developed a range of transformer monitoring tools, such as online multi-gas dissolved gas analysis (DGA), bushing monitors, and partial discharge monitoring systems for the global energy market. Wesley Suplit, product development manager at SDMyers, says that bringing Camlin’s utility-grade equipment to SDMyers will help the company serve its industrial customers with a more nuanced and precise approach to remote monitoring. The variation in criticality among a customer’s fleet of transformers, Suplit says, is a deciding factor on which monitor to use.

“When you apply DGA monitoring to transformers, you want to do it on a transformer-by-transformer basis,” Suplit states. “The criticality of each piece of equipment is different, and our customers want to put a higher level of resources and energy into higher criticality equipment. Our partnership with Camlin now gives them that option.”

Suplit also adds that the 5- and 9-gas monitors will not entirely replace the need for single-gas monitors because single-gas monitors are much simpler to install and operate; they also are a less expensive alternative.

Moleski adds that the relationship with Camlin will give SDMyers’ customers access to more sophisticated hardware and provide them with a clearer picture of the health of their transformers while still benefiting from the analytical expertise of the SDMyers Guardian Monitoring team. “There are other companies out there that offer data packages, but that data is looked at by algorithms,” she says, “The difference with us is that we have experts look at the data.”

SDMyers is already fulfilling orders for the new 5- and 9-gas monitors. The full range of equipment and services are available to new and existing SDMyers customers in the United States.