Andrew Phillips loves technology. He embraced it as a child while helping his father work on sailboats and when they would race the boats together on weekends in South Africa, where he was born and raised. “Sailing is a very technical sport. You've got to understand the reaction of the boat to the wind — and tactics,” Phillips said.

Now Phillips is all grown up and has a very technical job. He is program manager for transmission lines at EPRI. He admits that a large part of his job involves administration and even some politics as he collaborates with utilities and “funders” to advance research on transmission lines. He basically manages research and people who are doing research.

However, the best part about being a program manager at EPRI is “coming up with solutions to solve industry problems,” Phillips observed. A consummate engineer, Phillips lives for solving problems. “To be able to help provide more reliable electricity to people, we're making a huge impact on people's lives. The small little ideas still have a huge impact.”

Others in the industry recognize Phillips' drive and his talent for technology. “A positive attribute of Andrew is that he is very technically savvy, and in addition to orchestrating the research, he brings a lot of value to the technical aspects of the research — understanding a utility's problems that it's facing as well as understanding the path to get to a solution,” said Andy Stewart, president of EDM International, an EPRI contractor. “He's concerned about providing value to the industry.”

A cheerful, enthusiastic and passionate person, Phillips was frustrated when he didn't have enough time to work on an EPRI project that involved live-line work with nonceramic insulators. He had read an article by Ed Hunt of Western Area Power Administration in which Hunt states, “When it comes to nonceramic, or polymer, insulators, there is no commercially available instrument to field-test energized NCIs and no standard to test by.”

So Phillips brought the problem home. “Just having time to think about it, solve it and play, which is what it took, I decided to start doing it at home.” He spent a few hours a night, a few days per week, with a test rig at home and, after two months, came up with a benchtop prototype that tests composite insulators during live-line work. The tool fits to the end of a hotstick and is moved stepwise up the length of a polymer insulator to determine whether there are any internal electrical defects (in a similar way that you would assess the condition of porcelain discs by buzz testing them). This allows field personnel to test whether the electrical strength of a polymer insulator is compromised. Phillips has now contracted Southwest Research Institute to turn the prototype into a tool that can be tested full-scale at EPRI's high-voltage lab in Lenox, Massachusetts, U.S. If it works there, then EPRI will do trials on real transmission lines at utilities. EPRI is applying for a patent on the instrument.

EPRI's lab in Massachusetts is what brought Phillips to the United States from South Africa. After graduating from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, he earned a master's degree in microwave antenna design at the same university. He had plans to continue with a PhD in this area, but decided to pursue a PhD in high-voltage engineering, focusing on the “effects of altitude on corona from water droplets on transmission lines.”

He stayed at the university for five more years doing consulting work, which included research for Eskom and other power industry-related companies. He then decided to do a six-month post-doctoral exchange at the laboratory in Massachusetts. While there, he was offered a job by J.A. Jones, the company running the EPRI lab. EPRI then took over the operation of the lab from J.A. Jones, and Phillips transitioned right into a job with the institute.

Phillips has made his mark on the utility industry in the United States and the world. He is an expert on insulators and several of his ideas have turned into solutions. Companies in South Africa are still using test equipment he developed 12 years ago. And while at EPRI, he came up with the idea and developed the DayCor camera, a daytime predictive maintenance system for the inspection and detection of partial discharge, corona, arcing and related faults on overhead lines, insulators and substations. Recently, he has worked on developing low-cost, battery-powered wireless sensors with Joseph Graziano, program manager at Tennessee Valley Authority. “Andrew is a very energetic, intelligent person who's driven to get results,” Graziano noted.

Phillips manages to save some energy for his two-year-old daughter. He and his wife of eight years are also expecting another baby this December. One of Phillips' main goals is to find a way to balance his work, his family and himself, but he will also continue to solve problems in the industry, so that people can depend on reliable electricity.