ABB's service solutions in focus at customer seminar in Bahrain

The customer benefits of the concept include reduction of plant downtime due to maintenance process and increase in productivity.

The materials and components of electrical machines are subject to thermal, electrical, ambient and mechanical stresses. This leads to a process of degradation as materials lose strength over time. Thus importance of applying ABB's time and condition based maintenance strategies at early stage of the equipment life cycle.

During the seminar it was also demonstrated how to go green by upgrading classic drives: timely replacement of drives can lead into significant energy savings and reduction in CO2 emissions.

Life Expectancy Analysis Program (LEAP) - systematic approach to maintenance management

Surveys have shown that for larger motors, above 2000 kW, the most common cause of failure was in the stator (static) windings at nearly 61%. Since these larger machines are in the most widespread use in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries, ABB's LEAP analysis is focussed on assessing the condition of stator windings.

LEAP tracks the development of defects over time and can be directly integrated into a maintenance plan. ABB offers a package of DC (PDCA) and AC (Non-Linear Insulation Behavior, Partial Discharge and Tan Delta & Capacitance Analysis) measurements, to assess the condition of the stator winding.

Additionally the program enables an operator to know, with a high level of confidence, how long their motor or generator can remain in service before a failure.

"This systematic approach to maintenance management, when used in conjunction with the known time to repair or replace a component, allows service to be performed during planned downtime, rather than during a costly emergency," said Mostafa State, ABB's Machine Service Sales Manager in the Gulf.

The program provides the operator with detailed information on the condition of the stator insulation so they can plan effective action to prevent the failure and increase the overall life of the machine. To carry out a LEAP analysis, ABB takes a range of sophisticated instrumentation to site that enables a battery of tests to be performed on the stator winding insulation. This instrumentation is available throughout the world via ABB's network of 17 global service hubs.