Condition Assessment of EMU

Surge Arresters through NDT

PUNKAJ GUPTA
Chief Electrical Traction Engineer
South Eastern Railway,Kolkata

Synopsis

The recent failures of surge arresters fitted on the Electrical Multiple Units (EMU’s) of South Eastern
Railway was the motivation for exploring use of non-invasive monitoring to preempt failures. In this case
there was disruption to traffic for more than 3 hours in the sub-urban sections of Howrah division. Normally
the surge arresters are designed to provide trouble free service for 25-30 years. However, in the event of
moisture ingress the reliability is compromised. Thus, the manufacturing process to ensure proper sealing
which will last its service life is critical for its reliable performance. The monitoring methodology employed
in various methods attempts to indirectly detect degraded performance due to ingress of moisture/aging of
the internal assembly.

In order to provide reliable EMU services, the demand to reduce outages through better system monitoring
has gained importance. As surge protective devices, arresters mitigate the impact of events that might
otherwise trigger outages - monitoring them has become a necessity. For a vast majority of its life, an
arrester behaves as an insulator with low levels of leakage current over the insulating surface and very low
levels of leakage current through the zinc oxide disk material. Monitoring this leakage current is an
important step that can be taken to understand the health of the arrester. However in the present setup this
can only be carried out by disconnection and outage of the surge arrester leading to down time and limiting
the scope of inspection during major schedules.

A number of assessment methods and indicators have traditionally been utilized to reveal signs of
deterioration and provide clues to impending arrester failure.

The need to monitor quickly without outage and in a non-invasive manner is a critical requirement for
weeding out potential failure candidates and thereby ensuring trouble-free and reliable operation with
minimum outages. This is possible with a high degree of reliability by employing different Non-destructive
techniques with thermography as a promising and reliable option.
Arrester Fundamentals
Over voltages in electrical system may occur due to lightning, fault or switching operation. These over
voltages could reach dangerous amplitudes.To protect the electrical equipment and to guarantee an
economic and reliable operation, Gapless zinc oxide (ZnO) surge arresters are widely used. The surge
arresters are usually connected between the phase and ground terminals. They limit the voltage level in
equipments below the withstand voltage level. Figure 1 show the values of overvoltage which can be
reached without the use of arrester in per units. The time axis is divided into the range of lightning
overvoltage in microsecond, switching overvoltage in millisecond and temporary overvoltage in second. In
the lightning overvoltage and switching overvoltage range, the magnitude of overvoltage can reach several
per unit if the system is without arrester protection. Arrester could limit overvoltage below withstand
voltage of equipment. This phenomenon clearly shows the importance of arresters for lightning overvoltage
protection.

Figure. 1. Schematic representation of the magnitude of overvoltage

Zinc oxide surge arrester

The construction of ZnO surge arresters consist of a very simple structure. They basically consist of an
insulating housing which is made of porcelain or polymeric material, and the inner active column,
composed of the ZnO varistors as shown in Figure 2.

Figure. 2. The cross-section view of a polymeric insulated distribution class ZnO surge arrester
Voltage current characteristics of ZnO varistor block

The ZnO varistor block elements are the main component of the ZnO surge arrester. They provide the
desired non-linear characteristics and present a strong relation with the temperature (low current range).

The voltage-current characteristic shows an excellent non linearity throughout the range of 10-6 to 104 A.
The nonlinearity of this element is attributable to the combination of insulator (intergranular layer) and ZnO
grain. Figure 3 shows the V-I characteristics of ZnO element which are divided into three regions, being
low current region (I), operating region (II) and high current region (III).

Figure. 3. Voltage-current characteristics of ZnO element

Important Definitions
a) Arrester discharge current The current that flows through an arrester resulting from an
impinging surge.
b) Arrester discharge voltage The voltage that appears across the terminals of an arrester during
the passage of discharge current,
c) Lightning overvoltage The crest voltage appearing across an arrester or insulation caused by a
lightning surge.
d) Maximum continuous operating voltage (MCOV) rating The maximum designated root-
mean-square (rms) value of power frequency voltage that may be applied continuously between
the terminals of the arrester.
e) Rated Voltage The rated voltage is the maximum power frequency voltage that is applied in
the operating duty test for 10 seconds.
f) Standard lightning impulse The wave shape of the standard impulse used is 1.2/50 µA.
g) Temporary overvoltage An oscillatory overvoltage, associated with switching or faults (for
example, load rejection, single-phase faults) and/or nonlinearities (ferroresonance effects,
harmonics), of relatively long duration, which is undamped or slightly damped.

Purpose of Monitoring

Asset management is a growing concern. A popular form of asset management is to use a condition based
maintenance program. This type of asset management doesn’t require a specific schedule, but rather a more
efficient condition based schedule. For this type of maintenance program to work, however the condition of
the asset must be known and monitored. An accurate condition assessment and appropriate action to the
abnormality will restrict the premature failures (catastrophic).
Determining the condition of an arrester is still a developing field and several methods are currently
available. Because condition assessment is not a low cost endeavor, arrester condition monitoring is most
often performed only at critical locations where an arrester failure could cause serious ramifications in the
form of an outage and loss of revenue. In these cases it is generally the goal to predict eminent arrester
failure and have it removed before it does indeed fail.

Available Technologies

1. Insulation resistance
2. AC leakage current Monitoring
3. Third Harmonic Current Measurement
4. IR Thermography

Insulation resistance

Insulation resistance measurement is carried out using a meggar. Arrester degradation is generally on
account of moisture ingress thus monitoring Insulation Resistance by a meggar would provide an indication
of its health. Atmospheric condition like temperature and especially humidity has an appreciable affect on
the readings and thus the inferences can only be indicative and often misleading if carried out at times of
high humidity ( above 70-80%) and without guard terminal. The acceptable values are above a minimum of
1000 Mega-ohm. The cyclic check carried out on Tikiapara Based EMU stock reveals wide variation in
reading taken during summer compared to those in monsoon for the same arrester which at times could
generate false alarm or missing out failure prone candidate because of poor IR differential due to humidity.

AC Leakage Current Monitoring

Arrester leakage current which comprises of capacitive and resistive components is such an important
parameter to be analyzed because its third harmonic resistive component is known to be directly related to
the ageing or the degradation of the metal-oxide arrester itself.

Figure 4 Arrester with special ground connection for internal leakage current measurement

If the arrester is equipped with a special ground terminal that isolates the internal from external currents,
then just the total internal current can be monitored without the interference of the external surface leakage
current. Another advantage of this arrangement as shown in figure 4 is that no insulators are needed on the
bottom of the arrester if monitoring the external surface leakage current is not necessary.

Because metal oxide disks are more like insulators than conductors during steady state, they conduct very
little resistive current. However they can carry 2-10 ma of capacitive current. This high level of capacitive
current offers no real data about the condition of an arrester. If an arrester is failing, the current on the
leakage current meter may or may not change at all.

Unfortunately a 5 ma or higher total current (99% capacitive) shrouds the resistive current and eliminates
any real detection of the resistive current which is the current that is a true indicator of the condition of the
arrester.

The measurement of the total leakage current and the isolation of the resistive component is a laborious
procedure. As referred in IEC 60099-5 , the use of this method for online monitoring is limited due to the
difficulties that arise in the measurement of the total leakage current such as electromagnetic noise and
resistive leakage current computation, since this is much smaller than the capacitive component.
Furthermore, the accuracy of the method is influenced significantly from the phase shift of the voltage
reference signal and the presence of harmonics.

Third Harmonic Current Measurement

More recent surge monitors are with third harmonic current sensing and offer significantly more information
on the condition of the arrester than earlier generations of surge counters that were designed for SiC
arresters. The surge amplitude and time are recorded along with leakage current data. From the total
current the device calculates the third harmonic of the current.

Figure 5 Connections for LC Measurements Figure 6 Leakage Current Monitor

This third harmonic value is a very close representation of the resistive current. From the third harmonic
current the condition of the arrester can be very accurately assessed. If the current has increased by only a
few percent, it is detected and stored in the local database until an operator downloads it through the hand
held device. It is important to ensure that the instrument used for measuring the third harmonic current has
facility for compensation ( i.e. filtering facility for third harmonic noise in traction power) as per IEC99-5.

The figure 5 and 6 show measurements being carried out at Tikiapara shed for a EMU motor Coach. As can
be seen it involves removal of surge arrester and mounting on insulating platform to enable proper
measurement. This type of testing is only possible during POH once in 18 months at the workshop. The
leakage currents should generally be in the range of 20 to 50 microamperes. The values in the upper range
would generally be for arresters having more than 10 to 15 years of service life. In the above measurement
the defective surge arrester was having a third harmonic leakage current value of 562 microamperes while a
healthy one had 30 microamperes. The IR value for this healthy surge arrester was measured 8 Mega-ohms
during monsoon period without guard terminal.

IR Thermography

Infrared is an invisible portion of the light spectrum extending from 0.75 to 1000 microns. All objects
warmer than absolute zero (0 Kelvin or -273.15°C) emit energy somewhere within that range. The warmer
the object, the brighter is its image in thermal camera. In the color spectrum, the white is hotter & black is
colder. Only Infrared Cameras can sense & display the surface temperatures of any object.

Thermography entails the use of specialized cameras or thermal imagers that are sensitive to the detection of
electromagnetic energy (light) in the infrared wavelengths (heat). As such, these imagers serve as a remote
sensing system; nothing touches or harms the object under investigation. When the camera’s detectors sense
the incoming infrared heat, an electrical signal is produced that generates a visible image display.

This form of arrester condition assessment is a very fast and effective. If an arrester is in a long term failure
mode and is nearing its end of life, there is a high probability that it will be hot. A hot arrester can be
detected from a hundred meters away with even the simplest of infrared detecting equipment. Figure 7 is
an example of using three similar arresters as a reference to determine if an arrester is running abnormally
hot. In this case, the center arrester is about 9C hotter than the left most arrester. Since all the arresters are
of the same manufacturer and it appear to be of the same design, they should all be the same temperature.
The only time nearby and similar design arresters should be of different temperature is after a surge event or
temporary overvoltage event. Otherwise the temperatures should be the same. It is quite typical for
arresters to run 0-5C above ambient, but any temperature deviations above that should be considered an
issue. It is rare for an arrester to run more than 20C hotter than ambient other than in the lab. A 10 C
difference between two arrester of the same design and vintage is considered a take action level. What is
meant by “take action” is that the activities to remove the arrester from the energized circuit should be
initiated. Between 5 and 10C the arrester should be watched. If the arrester is in a critical circuit, then it is
advisable to also start the removal process. If an arrester is 15C different or higher than other similar
arresters, then it should be de-energized as soon as possible to avoid an outage. If the arrester is a porcelain
housed arrester, and the temperatures are 15C or higher then personnel should not be near the arrester until
it is de-energized for safety sake.

Figure 7 Substation Class Arresters with one unit Figure 8 Distribution Arrester with 15C difference
about 9 C higher than the cooler part between hottest spot and coolest unit .
of the arrester.
The Surge Arresters for EMU rake 621-632-617 were checked with the IR Thermal imager and the thermo
grams are shown in figure 9

Motor coach 10621 Motor coach 10632 Motor coach 10617

Figure 9 Thermal pictures of surge arresters mounted on EMU rake 621-632-617

The thermal camera used was TESTO make model 875 ( Figure 10 ) with 120 X 160 Pixel resolution
available with Sntragachi TRD depot. The images were shot in the late evening with the rake having been
energized for more than 8 hours. As can be seen all arresters are having a temperature of about 34oC and are
in healthy condition.

Surge Arrester

EMU Motor Coach 621 of Tikapara Roof Top View of Motor Coach Thermal Imager

Figure 10 A cost effective means of assessing the temperature of an arrester.

Condition Monitoring Strategy for Surge Arresters of EMU / MEMU

Failures are mostly due to the following problems either the outcome of slack quality control during
manufacture or aging and its integrated affect over a period of time.

a. Ingress of moisture, due to bad sealing

b. Localized losses and discharging caused by poor inter-disc contact
c. Housing deterioration or pollution changing the voltage distribution along the stack
d. Mechanical fractures in the MO material due to thermal runaway after a high-current surge
e. Damage due to surge current concentration at the edge of the electrode resulting in failure
f. Resultant damage to the discs created by previous multiple-stroke lightning surges.
The failure curve is typically flat during the healthy state and would shoot up relatively fast in case of
moisture ingress or any other deficiency build up.

Third Harmonic Resistive Current vs Time Arrester -II

Arrester - I

1.5 3.0 4.5 6.0 7.5 9.0 10.5 12.0 13.5 15.0 16.5 18.0 19.5 21.0
Time in years

Third Harmonic Resistive Current Measurement technique is very effective in detecting defective/ aged
Surge Arresters but needs outage and downtime and is not practicable for periodic condition monitoring in
EMU’s during minor schedules. It can be carried out during POH(1.5 Years). As can be seen the third
harmonic measurements would be useful for ascertaining and planning normal mortality while thermal
imaging would be the ideal technique for condition monitoring between two Third Harmonic Resistive
Current Measurements to weed out potential failure prone candidates. This can be conveniently included in
the 10 day maintenance schedule of EMU / MEMU.

Conclusion

Thermal imaging is one of the most valuable diagnostic tools used for condition monitoring of equipment.
Infra red pictures are produced by which temperature measurements can be made. By detecting anomalies
often invisible to the naked eye, thermal imaging allows corrective action before costly system failures
occur. A thermal vision camera has proven to be an effective on-line condition monitoring tool for
determining hot spots on surge arrester. This information is useful in predicting the temperature profiles and
deciding the remedial action to be taken well in advance.

Thermography helps in early identification & quantification of the potential problem area. Breakdowns and
Downtime is a force to reckon with in Indian Railways. Minimizing downtime is essential for ensuring an
efficient operation.