National Grid Saudi Arabia has contracted Doble Engineering Co. for advanced services to support a new phase of its power grid reliability initiative, which will expand transformer health programs into additional regions.
Since June 2014, the two organizations worked together to perform asset health reviews on nearly 1,700 transmission transformers located mostly in National Grid Saudi Arabia’s Western, Southern, and Eastern Operating Area, using both time-based and predictive maintenance philosophies. The new project will extend this approach on additional transformers located mostly in the Central Operating Areas and will continue to review data for the other regions. This will effectively bring all of the organization’s transformers under diagnostic surveillance.
As part of this effort, Doble will be implementing dobleARMS®, an Asset Risk Management System with automated diagnostics based on failure modes and effects analysis. This will deliver 24/7 access to information and visualization of data and diagnostic information.
The new agreement also includes the continued review of testing and maintenance practices, a comprehensive study of National Grid Saudi Arabia’s in-house electrical insulating oil laboratories, and the ability to leverage Doble’s experience for the ongoing condition assessment of transformers.
Mohammed Muaili, Head of the Technical Support Department (TSD) of National Grid Saudi Arabia noted that “this is an important program for Asset Management of the transformer fleet and part of National Grid Saudi Arabia’s practice of continuous improvement.”
Doble will continue to maintain a strong presence in the region, working hand-in-hand with the National Grid Saudi Arabia team on implementation. The project will be supported by a team of Doble specialists with extensive transformer experience including design and construction, electrical testing, laboratory analysis and diagnostics.
“In any asset management program, you need to start with quality data,” said Paul Griffin, vice president of consulting and testing services at Doble. “We’ve been working closely with the team in Saudi Arabia to make sure their diagnostic data is of high quality, that it is organized in a way that allows for further analysis, and that the in-house team is trained and comfortable with the intricacies of field and laboratory testing, as well as diagnostic analysis of the data. It’s a complex undertaking that can yield tremendous results for an organization.”
