Salt River Project provides electricity to 920,000 customers in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. Robert Jensen, principal engineer in the Salt River Project Apparatus Engineering Department, will present a session on ABB Type 15-VHK-500 Vacuum Breakers Manufactured Between 1989 and 1997 at the Finepoint Circuit Breaker Test and Maintenance Training Conference on Thursday, Oct. 9.

Jensen will describe the problems Salt River Project experienced with the ABB Type 15-VHK-500 vacuum breakers with model 20 mechanisms installed in metal clad switchgear. He will also share the solution that was found for those problems.

SRP has about 160 VHK model 20 breakers installed on its system. In January 2003 one of them failed by machine gunning (continuously opening and closing without any command to do so). By working with ABB, the SRP Electric Shop personnel rebuilt the failing portion of the breakers, saving considerable money and restoring an otherwise reliable breaker to useful service.

Jensen has been employed by SRP for 24 years where, in addition to the Substation Apparatus Group, he has worked in the Distribution Standards and Distribution Operations groups. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from New Mexico State University and is a registered engineer in Arizona and New Mexico. He is a member of IEEE. Prior to working for SRP, he worked for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia, and the County of Los Alamos in New Mexico.