Substation Reliability Tip #06

The Preferred Maintenance Plan

What if you could see problems before they occur? That would be ideal for power system owners, wouldn’t it? Because unplanned downtime due to electrical equipment failure can be quite costly—in the tens of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

While seeing the future would be nice, we don’t need a crystal ball to predict failures. For transformer owners, predictive maintenance, also called condition-based maintenance, is the most effective way to evaluate asset conditions through real-time data and is priceless for predicting failures.

What is Condition-Based Maintenance?

Condition-based maintenance (CBM) is a maintenance strategy that monitors the real-time condition of an asset to provide data and insight to make informed, cost-effective, and efficient maintenance decisions. Unlike preventive maintenance, which operates on routine calendar-based activities, condition-based maintenance seeks to prevent failures (and downtime) by monitoring and analyzing irregularities, trending data, or indicators of decreased performance.

The benefits of condition-based maintenance include increased reliability, lower long-term maintenance costs, lower risks of downtime, better prioritization of resources, and maximum asset life. For electric power systems and transformer owners, these benefits translate directly to the bottom line and a just as valuable peace of mind.