Bravo to Substation team members Mario Caglin, Randy Daniel and Ronald Baptiste. The three, led by Mario, recently repaired damaged switchgear at the Castries Substation. It was the first time this particular repair was executed in-house. Traditionally, manufacturer’s technicians would have had to be brought in to resolve.
In an electric power system like ours, switchgear is made up of electrical disconnect switches, fuses or circuit breakers used to control, protect and isolate electrical equipment. It is used both to de-energize equipment to allow work to be done and to clear faults downstream.
The switchgear is gas insulated. It was damaged during attempts to resolve a larger issue on the Northern ring that caused the Castries-Reduit line (by way of a fault at Carellie) to trip. The damage caused the insulating gas in the chamber of the switchgear for that line to leak out. Without insulating gas, applying power to that part of the switchgear would create a fault condition in the form of an arcflash (a type of electrical) explosion.
As it had in the past, the company would have had to engage a site technician from switchgear manufacturer Siemens at an approximate cost of €27,500 to repair the damage. But not this time. Mario, who is an Electrical Technician, had spent extensive time working closely with the Siemens technician on the switchgear from the end of 2014 into the first quarter of 2015. He believed he knew exactly how to repair the damage. Working with Substation Supervisor Randy, he designed a method statement which was submitted to the manufacturer for review. Siemens reviewed the submission and offered no correction.
Having gotten the green light, the three-man Substation team executed the job with two technicians looking on for work experience and knowledge transfer. The job was successful and the switchgear restored to working condition.
The delay between the failure of the switchgear seal and its restoration was approximately two weeks.
