What would you teach?

[oldfieldguy]

I've been in electrical power since 1977, 480-500,000 volts. I've designed, commissioned, maintained, etc. Hands-on and as supervisor and manager.

for the past three years I've worked for an interstate natural gas pipeline where 480 volts was "high voltage" and 1000 kVA was a "big transformer".

In progress right now we're installing a bunch of large electric drives, 7000 (VFD's on these) to 22,000 (synchronous) and as a result our stations are getting switchgear in the the 15 kV range.

I have been involved in discussions about what we teach our key technical staff and the station personnel so they can "take care of" this new equipment.

I'm pushing the view that we teach them basic information to keep them safe and tell them that problems are outside their expertise and that a one-week school at a national training facility is NOT going to give them enough expertise to jump in and do preventive maintenance on high voltage equipment.

My favorite and oft-repeated statement is "Treat it like a Japanese radio: "No user-serviceable parts inside.""

I'd appreciate the group's thoughts: What would YOU do if you suddenly dropped a building full of 15 kV gear in the middle of a site where they'd never dealt with anything above 480 volts?

old field guy

 

[DRWeig]

I'm afraid that if it were my site, I'd immediately look to hire an old field guy to maintain it... ;-}

You don't train for high voltage work. You educate hands-on through apprenticeship and certification.

I agree with your position 100 percent!

Goober Dave

PS -- I'm one of the ones you'd be telling to stay away, and I would appreciate such. I'm a 600V class guy.

 

[oldfieldguy]

Dave-

thanks. I have tried to explain in carefully selected terms that the step from 480 volts to 13,800 is much more severe than imagined by the uninitiated.

Yes, people learn this stuff all the time, but it is not a case of two four-day training sessions and you're an expert.

I sat in on a conference call on the training issue. One of the participants actually said he expected us to train our division technical staff (low-voltage folks and instrumentation and control types) to be able to go to one of our new sites and instruct a contractor on what maintenance and tested needed to be done during scheduled maintenance, then supervise the work to make sure it was done correctly.

And they want to reach this level of expertise by the end of September.

old field guy

 

[dpc]

I basically agree with you, although I'd certainly want to provide the HV training anyway.

They need to know how to safely de-energize the equipment and I'd suggest developing written procedures for placing the 15 kV gear in an "Electrically-safe work condition" just to deal with any emergencies.



David Castor

http://www.cvoes.com

 

[itsmoked]

I think it depends on the quality of the staff you have and the complexity of any expected servicing.

Could be you have little confidence in the staff. Perhaps they are bumbling fools? Or they could be quite technically minded, thoughtful, methodical and careful people.

Have they made judgmental mistakes in the past? Do they do things like tack SO cord to the walls because it's easier than running conduit? Do they currently execute safety procedures, like lock-outs, automatically and without fail?

As for the real HV, I can imagine some pretty straight forward maintenance on equipment that could be clearly isolated.

What I'm saying is I don't think you're reasonable laying a blanket judgment over the entire subject. You need to look at the whole and the specific before you can say it's a "good idea" or "bad idea".

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[SparkyLarks]

I'm being asked the same questions at the moment.

I agree that they won't be able to learn how to carry out the maintainence but they should be able to learn what tests need to be carried out ,and how they should be performed, and what sort of results should be seen.

Explaing what a pressure test is and what it tells us, or what a Ductor test is.

Though I would also suggest that for the first few services someone more experienced would look at the results.

And They shouldn't operate the equipment, i.e. opening/Closing circuit breakers and earth switches.
But they should know when a unit is in service, or earthed etc.

 

[Skogsgurra]

"Seven years in the trade" plus adequate theoretical training is what we usually use(d) as a criterion before anyone is/was allowed to work on his own on MV and HV equipment.


Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

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100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...

 

[schell44]

Oldfieldguy,
Being with the other company with the same initials as davidbeach's company, we are dealing with the same issues. Most of our technicians have limited power experience since most of their work involves instrumentation, PLCs, battery system, valve actuators, regulators and all of the other systems associated with compressor stations, with few motors larger than 60 HP.
In facilities that do have MV, the techs are limited to operating 4.16 kV starters and starter disconnects and opening and closing MV circuit breakers. Racking breakers, installing grounds, resetting trips on MV gear requires calling out electricians from the substation group. This is virtually the same as bring in a subcontractor.
For a few tasks that would be performed a few times a year, the training requirements are just too great.

 

[Zogzog]

For 12 years I did custom on site training programs for this exact type of thing, the advantages of on site, hands on training on your gear is 10x what they get out of going to a "school" to learn it. I would never call the graduates of my 80 hour course experts by any means but they knew everything they needed to know to perform thier jobs, only actually doing the PM's and operations would make them proficient. FOr many of my clients, I trained the same guys every year in a shorter refresher course. In those classes, we (me and the class) basically performed all of the PM's on thier MV breakers and transformers.

 

[catserveng]

I was faced with a similar situation at the engine dealer I used to work for when we started getting a number of 4160V and 12kV generator sets coming thru. Sales and management had the impression it was no problem, so when iron started showing up all the sudden we needed solutions, and of course there was no budget.

I struggled with this issue for several months, and since I was a lousy politician, got into a number of losing battles.

I tried this approach, first I made a list of tasks that needed to be performed on the new equipment, starting at safety, LOTO, etc. Then defined the skill levels for each of those tasks.

We struggled and had a few ugly situations, fortunately no one was seriously hurt, but it took an incident involving some customer personel for us to get shredded by the CAL-OSHA folks. After the fine and several come to jesus meetings afterwards, finally got a buy in on defining tasks, skill levels, and employee qualifications. As we moved thru the process, management finally figured out that making everyone "certified" was going to expensive and time consuming process. We agreed on allowable tasks to be performed, defined two levels of technicians to perform the appropriate tasks, and anything outside that defined scope required using a qualified contractor.

That lasted a couple of years, I left and with the economy tanking, someone higher up felt that the in house people were qualified, and a few problems happened. Now me and some of my competitors do most of that kind of work for them.

I won some of the arguments just with the cost of PPE and maintaining it. I hope you have better luck in dealing with those around regarding this type of issue than I did, it ended up being a large contributor in making a career change.

Hope that helps, good luck!

 

[dpmac]

Many of the facilities we service have 15kV, 1000MVA metal clad switchgear for the most part. This includes the small industrial, commercial and large corporate accounts. We have found that most of the facilities have simply let the experienced people go (to expensive) and have hired fewer, younger less experienced people. They start out believing they will simply train their people to operate this equipment. Eventually they realize whats involved and how much it will cost between proper training and proper PPE. We can only hope nobody gets killed while waiting for them to figure it out.

 

[TurbineGen]

The entire electrical staff should be trained on basics, I agree. They need to understand Lock out/tag out procedures and how to tell if the breakers are openen or closed and when they are in a safe state.

However if these breakers can be racked out and maitained away from high voltage, it might be a good idea to train one or two people on how to do it. Newer switchgear has many safety interlocks on it including remote racking systems and training one or two people on how to rack out the breaker and remove it from service might be a good idea. I would also recommend buying explosion proof gear as well, just in case. Of course, the people working on the breakers wwould be required to wear proper arc flash protection as well.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
If it is broken, fix it. If it isn't broken, I'll soon fix that.

 

[ScottyUK]

I assume you mean arc-resistant gear? Explosion-proof switchgear is a very different animal, typically found in mining applications.


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