Avoid an IPB 911: Isolated Phase Bus Preventative Maintenance

By May 1, 2014 June 21st, 2016 Blog, Services

Isolated phase bus preventative maintenance can help you avoid the safety issues and inefficiencies that result from improperly maintained isophase bus duct systems.

We’ll share some important things you’ll want to consider as you develop your preventative maintenance plan, as well as the types of bus duct failures that result when you don’t perform routine online assessments, offline inspections, and clean your IPB system.  

Your isolated phase bus preventative maintenance plan.

What should it include?

Online Assessment: An online, non-invasive isophase EMI diagnostics survey will determine the health of your IPB and identify problem areas during your outage planning stage, rather than when the outage occurs. That saves you time and money. Once identified, a repair plan can be put into place.

Offline Inspection: Internal IPB video inspection is a powerful tool in your preventative maintenance arsenal. It allows you to uncover internal issues before a fault occurs with both photographic and video documentation. The internal robot inspection is performed before IPB work to establish the baseline of the system and locate and generate a repair plan.

Offline Cleaning: Specialized, environmentally-friendly, cryogenic cleaning can eliminate dirt and debris within the bus system and proves superior to any hand cleaning method.

What happens when you don’t perform routine isolated phase bus preventative maintenance?

Common isophase failures:

A failure to maintain your system can lead to:

  • Cracked insulators
  • Presence of moisture
  • Debris in bus duct enclosure
  • Dirt or dust build up
  • Loosened IPB conductor support insulator bolts due to vibration and thermal cycling
  • Aluminum laminate failure of conductor thermal expansion joint

Routine, thorough inspections and assessments, however, help prevent against these kinds of failures.
Schedule your on-line or offline assessment today!