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Intellix BMT 330
Bushings account for a large proportion of High Voltage (HV) substation failures often causing severe and costly damages. Preventive maintenance, early replacement and regular off-line testing have been employed to address this issue in the past. Now, technology exists that enables asset owners to detect impending failures and reduce their maintenance costs.
GE’s IntellixTM BMT 330 is an on-line system that continuously monitors the condition of the bushings and can also detect developing partial discharge (PD) activity in the transformer main tank. It will alert personnel of fault conditions at an early stage and provide vital health information on the bushings and the transformer. The IntellixTM BMT 330 can be utilized as a standalone system to monitor bushing insulation and partial discharge activity, or as an integrated, one-vendor solution with GE’s KelmanTM TRANSFIX Dissolved Gas Analysis (DGA) MultigasAnalyzer and PerceptionTM Fleet software providing a more in-depth view of the transformer’s condition and root cause of major transformer failures.
Key Benefits
- Comprehensive monitoring of transformer bushings and PD activity on a 3 phase transformer or a bank of 3 single phase transformers
- One product combining on-line continuous bushing monitoring and partial discharge activity in the transformer main tank using the same bushing adaptor
- One diagnostic software, GE’s Perception, used for bushing information, PD activity and DGA data analysis, resulting in familiar easy-to-use information
- One supplier installing, servicing, ensuring proper communication and minimizing administrative burden in order to lower the total cost of ownership of your transformer
The Intellix BMT 330 continuously monitors the condition of bushings in real-time and provides end users with the information they are used to receiving from off-line tests, namely changes in capacitance and power factor (tan delta), to assess the bushing dielectric efficiency and insulation integrity.
Using custom made adapters connected at the bushing tapping points, the Intellix BMT 330 measures:
- The change in bushing leakage current compared with the original values calculated from the bushing nameplate information. As the change in current is proportional to the change in capacitance, the IntellixTM BMT 330 calculates the change in capacitance C1 of the bushing compared with when the bushing was installed, to gauge dielectric efficiency.
- The timing differences between the 3 bushing current phases, which translate to phase angle differences relative to each other. Since a change of phase delay equates to a change in power factor, we can determine for each bushing the relative (compared to the others) power factor change as a percentage of the nameplate value. This is used to gauge the health of the bushing insulation
The Intellix BMT 330 measures both oil and ambient temperature. It correlates capacitance changes linked to thermal expansion of the bushing and compensates for the measurements being made at actual bushing operating temperature compared with nameplate values obtained off-line.
PD is a localized breakdown of a small portion of a solid or fluid electrical insulation system that is under high voltage stress, which does not completely bridge the space between two conductors. PD results in localized gradual erosion of the insulation system that eventually leads to failure ofthe critical insulation between transformer windings.
Using the same bushing adaptors, the IntellixTM BMT 330 offers the addedadvantage of measuring high frequency signals in order to monitorPD activity, giving an added level of protection for the main tank of thetransformer.
The amplitude of the PD pulses, as well as the number of pulses, are recordedand used to calculate an overall measure of PD activity.
Several methods are used to discriminate between internal PD and externalnoise (corona discharge). The BMT 330 also provides Partial Discharge Phase Resolve (PDPR) diagnostics.
