Electrical preventative maintenance in your industrial facility
In the electrical industry, electrical preventive maintenance is compared much like vehicle maintenance. Every vehicle manufacturer has stages to which components need to be verified or replaced through the life of the vehicle. Similarly, you should treat electrical equipment in your industrial facility the same. However, installing and electrical system creates significant complacency. It will provide adequate performance over the life of the system. Preventive maintenance is essential and lack of ignoring the maintenance is often directly related to failures. Most importantly, it can trigger unwanted downtime or even cause severe injury or death.
Preventing Electrical Failure
If your electrical distribution system in an industrial facility is not adequately maintained, a great deal can go wrong. As electrical loads cycle between high and low demand, thermal expansion and contraction cause connections to loosen. uncleaned electrical panels accumulate dust and dirt that deposit on connections. The loose and dirty connections provide a high resistance path. Which are directly responsible for more than 30 percent of electrical failures. On the other hand, the remaining 70% are due to human error. See article.
According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), not performing electrical preventative maintenance makes the failure rate 3x higher. Telling us that the 70% human error is avoidable, and the other 30% can be prevented. But what does an electrical preventive maintenance program entail? Here is a checklist for your commercial building.
Qualified Personnel
It is important that the people who perform your electrical preventative maintenance program be properly trained to work on the equipment being tested. This includes understanding the functionality of the equipment, both electrically and mechanically. And having a thorough knowledge of electrical safety practices and procedures in a commercial and industrial facility. Remember that special training is required for high-voltage equipment, so don’t overlook this aspect.
Inspection, Testing, and Servicing
The first step in an electrical preventative maintenance program is a complete thermographic inspection of all electrical equipment prior to the scheduled outage. This survey is a non-invasive method of identifying high temperature excursions which indicate potential problem areas. Ideally, a thermographic inspection should be done during peak-load conditions by a certified and experienced thermographer. In addition, protective relays and circuit breaker trip devices need to be tested and calibrated. Therefore, ensure that the people doing this work have the proper equipment, experience, and training to perform these functions. To sum up, see our article on predictive maintenance program for a list of tasks to perform on your industrial equipment. Likewise, here is an article on proactive maintenance strategies.
Concise and Complete Record-Keeping
This is the most overlooked aspect of the preventative maintenance program. However, a clear record-keeping system ensures that the work is done accordingly . In addition, tracking of test results is beneficial to communication and effectiveness in staff. That is to say, you can keep everyone up-to-date during a change in staff.
Money factor
Electrical preventive maintenance is cost-effective in several different ways. Firstly, it is cheaper to make repairs to equipment before it fails. When electrical equipment fails, there is usually subsequent damage to other components in the system. Often, your equipment is irreparable and must be completely replaced.
In addition, an effective electrical preventative maintenance program will improve equipment efficiency and reduce utility bills. A loose or dirty connection has increased resistance which results in higher power losses. By simply tightening and cleaning electrical connections, you can lower these energy costs. When considered over a period of time, these energy losses can add up to quite a significant amount of money.
If you have been taking your electrical distribution system for granted, it’s probably time for you to implement an electrical preventative maintenance program to your industrial or commercial facility.