Jon Giesecke, director of JLG Associates, LLC and the North American Distributor for PowerPD, Inc. attended and presented at the 5^th annual “Doble, Life of a Transformer” seminar.  This event was attended by over 500 of the worlds top transformer experts and manufactures.  Over 15 countries were represented at this year’s event. 

Jon’s presentation addressed the issue of the aging of transformers and the way to plan for and control the future failures.  He stressed that in this age of technology it is unacceptable to have an unexpected failure.  He also pointed out that a new approach to transformer inspection must be applied by all those responsible for maintaining these valuable assets.  During this event Jon had the opportunity to demo the TP500A to many attendees that wandered past his booth during the expo.  Many eyes were opened to a new way of doing inspections while remaining energized and fully loaded.  He made it very clear that most utilities were only doing a minimum inspection using infrared and oil analysis.  He presented what he calls a “Level II Condition Assessment” (L₂CA) which has a proven track record of reducing failure rates in many cases to zero.

A case for continuous on line monitoring was formed during a side bar conversation with a nuclear plant engineer.  He told Jon that they are having a new GSU built to replace one of their aging units.  The aging unit will be placed in the spare yard.  The cost for the new GSU is $8.5 million.  He feels that adding a TM500A is the smart thing to do and has a plan to do this prior to the delivery of this unit to avoid the nuclear mod process on site.  He feels that the small price of the TM500A is almost un-noticeable when compared to the cost of the new transformer.  This type of forward looking thinking was very evident at this conference.

Two leading transformer manufactures expressed interest in having JLG Associates and PowerPD visit their factories to apply the TP500A to new transformers that are undergoing final testing.

Doble is a world class organization and really did a world class job with this event.  Jon Giesecke and the PowerPD family would like to thank Doble, Flir and  Dr. Robert Madding of the Flir Infrared Training Center for co-writing the paper for this year’s conference. Flir also extended a welcome to JLG Associates to share booth space at this event. Doble has extended an invitation for Jon to attend the Doble conference in Boston this March. Go to www.doble.com for information on this event.

Remember, there are two kinds of failure, expected and unexpected.  The people who experience unexpected failure in this day of L₂CA and the technology that goes along with it are not taking advantage of the resources at hand.

For detailed information on this inspection process contact,

Jon Giesecke, Director

JLG Associates

(610) 518-1615

 jgiesecke@powerpd.net