Striving for Zero Planned Outages: Monitoring Electrical Equipment Failure Indicators

Electrical system preventive and predictive maintenance methodologies have experienced growth due to new technologies. This article reviews the historical and current approaches to electrical equipment maintenance and also highlights available technologies that will support future modes of equipment maintenance. Low-voltage (LV) and medium-voltage (MV) systems are reviewed. The need for improved reliability and uptime of electrical systems continues, and effective monitoring systems support a new concept of zero planned outages. Monitoring the parameters linked to potential failure modes addresses two key needs: 1) to notify end users of a pending failure condition and 2) to recommend maintenance and/or inspections based on a trending analysis of failure mode contributing parameters rather than planned outages. This article reviews both IEEE and end-user surveyed failure indicators and technologies to continuously monitor such failure indicators.