Video: Online monitoring: what eight technical webinars teach

Video transcript

Eight technical webinars that do not belong to any single asset. What online monitoring is for, what makes the data worth having, and the equipment everybody forgets until it fails. The introductory session sets out 3 tests for any monitoring programme, and they are worth applying before buying anything. Of the 3, timeliness is the one these sessions treat most carefully, and the argument is subtler than it sounds. An old test report is not automatically out of date.

Quality is broken down into the dimensions used in data management, because the sessions argue that a condition assessment is only as good as the data underneath it. And there is a case study that makes the point better than any definition. An operator sampling every 6 months, with the same people drawing the samples, had records showing suspiciously low fault gases. Which leads to the session on metadata, and to the best single line in this whole set of webinars: numbers alone do not always tell the story.

Another finding repeated across these sessions goes against intuition, and it changes how a fleet should be assessed. Two assets in this group are monitored far less often than they should be. The first is the instrument transformer: the oil-immersed current and voltage transformers scattered around every switchyard. The second is the station battery, and here the driver is partly regulatory. It is also the one asset whose whole job is to work on the day everything else has stopped.

One session is devoted entirely to getting the data out, because that is where programmes stall. The measurement is the easy part. And finally, the session about getting value out of monitors that are already installed, which is a more common situation than anyone admits. Five things that run through all 8 sessions. Online condition monitoring, from Amperis.