to prevent catastrophes and damage to components. Without breakers, most faults would lead to widespread and long-lasting outages, not to mention the damage and repair costs that come with them. Mick: Testing helps us make proper maintenance decisions at the right moment. Recently, we had an older Brown, Boveri & Company (BBC) breaker with an oil leak. A motion measurement revealed that the motion went up and then abruptly stopped during the closing operation. So, we concluded that the damping wasn’t working. When we opened the damper, we saw that the inside was completely broken, and the hydraulic oil was empty. After fixing it, the measurement showed that it was damping again. You can identify these types of issues with measurements, and of course, we’re very excited about that. «If we get the chance to influence testing cycles, we take a hybrid approach between timebased and condition-based maintenance. In general, we test medium-voltage breakers at least every four years.» Rick Tiemessen, Component and Maintenance Engineer, Qirion 28
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