Electrical Thermal Imaging Surveys

Thermography makes it possible to analyze electrical defects like loose connections and over loaded circuits. The most common cause of electrical fires is transformer cooling faults, motor winding faults and induced currents.

Thermographic analysis scrutinize electrical equipment as well as distribution fuse boards, MCB boards, conductors, switch boards, transformers, motors, battery banks, UPS’s, control panels, switch fuses and isolators. Whilst the equipment is in operation, causing no disruption to business operations.

Electrical thermal imaging surveys are non-intrusive, enabling analysis to complete safely and efficiently, without interrupting business operations. Choose Red Current Ltd to start a thermo graphic analysis of your electrical systems permits the following benefits to realize:

Periodic Electrical Testing

Electrical thermography analyzes electrical problems that unlikely to notice during fixed wire testing and inspections.

Regular Fixed Wire Testing carried out to make sure that safety devices such as earth protection, fuses and circuit breakers execute as needed under short circuit and fault load conditions. These devices give no protection against the risks related to poor connections.

Thermography should carry out following fixed wire testing to make sure poor connections have not introduced during the Fixed Wire testing activity.

Extend Equipment Life Cycle and Analyze Energy Savings

A thermo graphic survey allows an insight into the practical effectiveness of equipment, enabling the analysis of opportunities to make energy savings together with increasing the practical life cycle of equipment.

Reduction in Breakdowns

Depending on the type of equipment and its area, the cost of electrical failure will run into several thousands of pounds in repairs, lost production and injury claims etc.

The more efficient a company is at producing a product, the higher the profit margins will be. This places a great demand on reliable utilities and reliable equipment. Whenever there is an interruption in any of these, efficiency drops and so does profits. In most cases the repairs for damaged equipment is only a small percentage of the real loses a company faces. As you are probably aware, these losses can vary from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars per hour, and sometimes even higher. Using the anticipating skill of infrared inspections, your company could know when equipment is going to fail so you could respond in time.

As faults are found before they affect equipment to fail, the associated cost of repairs is minimal compared to the cost of equipment failure.

Save Energy and Increase Efficiency

Infrared is the only technology that can detect where excessive energy is being lost. Definitely, overheating connections consume electricity, but usually nowhere near the degree of many industrial processes. Companies with boilers, furnaces and kilns would decrease their energy costs by repairing and replacing missing and damaged insulation. Identification and removal of wet insulation in flat roofs will save heating and cooling costs. Damage around doors and windows would save energy cost and prevent moisture from entering a building. Cryogenic liquids/gas leaks would quickly detect using both infrared and ultrasound technologies.

Less interruption while operating means more up time and greater productivity.

Equipment issues fixed before they fail, damage or destroy the rest of the machine.

Analyzing developing issues and planning the repairs results in fewer “panic situations”, those expensive circumstances that force excessive overtime and financial premiums for emergency equipment orders.

Increase the Effectiveness of Your Maintenance Personnel Efforts

Consider how much time maintenance person spend doing work that is oftentimes unnecessary. For example, during a planned shutdown, they may have their highly skilled electricians open electrical panels and control cabinets and re-torque every wire connection or rebuild every motor conductor; a timely and often daunting task. Not to mention the chance that a new problem introduced from the tear-down of equipment. By comparison, infrared can detect loose and deteriorated connections in minimal time without tearing down or rebuilding the equipment. With results of an infrared analysis in hand before a shutdown, labor and materials could plan appropriately and issues fixed efficiently.

Many maintenance departments asked to execute more duties with less labor. Incorporating an infrared program into the “maintenance loop” will enable you to work smarter with fewer resources. More companies are realizing this, which is why infrared is growing so rapidly.

Benefits of Thermography

• It is a non-invasive and efficient technique
• The method produces proper and quick output
• Possibility of scanning a large surface in a few minutes
• Presentation of output in digital and visual form
• Back-up software for elaborate analysis and image processing
• Ease in monitoring even without specialization

Safety

• An industrial process that runs reliably and without surprises produces a safe work environment.  Many industrial processes are complex and run at maximum speed.  A sudden failure on one machine can have a cascading effect of failures that may include flying debris.
• Fire avoidance.  Overheated electrical connections can start fires.  You may have heard of a fire in your area that it caused by “faulty wiring”.  This means many things including bad design and overloaded circuits.  It commonly means poor electrical connection that was overheating and was not found in time.

Quality

• A process that runs reliably will produce higher quality than a process that experiences sudden stops, mechanical wrecks, and a lack of maintenance to key components.

Advantages:

• It is a non-contact type technique
• Fast, reliable & proper output
• A large surface area can scan in a very short time
• Presented in visual & digital form
• Data can store for later image processing and analysis
• Requires very little skill for monitoring (but not for evaluation, see disadvantages)
• Due to the motility of modern IR cameras they can made available at any time and at any place
• No production interruptions, also all equipment should work at nominal load
• Complies with legislation or insurance requirements
• Easily prioritize emergencies.