If you work for a power generation facility you are in charge of making sure thousands of homes and businesses have reliable power. When a bad storm hits everyone turns to their power provider for answers and to get the power back up and running. UIS has an established relationship with this power generation facility based out of Michigan. UIS does yearly Preventative Maintenance work on all aspects of the electrical systems. UIS also performs many emergency functions for this customer. UIS is typically called out 6-10 times per year. Almost all of their equipment is electrical since they are a power generation facility so they have occasional emergency calls. This exact breaker failed several years ago and another company provided a replacement breaker. UIS was called by the customer with an emergency call. The customer explained that the 6000 AMP medium voltage breaker had a catastrophic failure, and had caught on fire!

Once the fire was put out by professionals, UIS technicians went to work by removing all the damaged parts.

Assessed all damaged parts:

  • Finger clusters were melted
  • Stabs in the cubicle were melted
  • Jugs had fire damage
  • Bus wrap was damaged and melted
  • Shutters had fire damage

Then cleaned all the parts that were affected. The next hurdle was to facilitate the procurement of new equipment.

UIS Solutions:

  • Utilized a spare breaker that was on hand
  • UIS sourced two new stabs for replacement from a 3rd party source
  • UIS replaced all jugs
  • UIS reconditioned the damaged bus including cleaning silver plating and new insulating bus wrap
  • Tested all controls for the breaker cubicle
  • Replaced all CT’s in the breaker cubicle
  • Fully tested refurbished spare breaker
  • Fully cleaned the breaker cubicle
  • Assessed and verified operation of breaker cooling system
  • UIS replaced cooling fans. The customer cut in new cooling vents to increase airflow on the back of the cubicle
  • Replaced smoke detectors.
  • Installed fiber optic temperature monitoring system
  • Tested the yard transformer to ensure no damage was incurred from the breaker failure
  • Tested the segmented bus connecting the breaker to the yard transformer
  • Replaced and torqued all new hardware
  • Fabricated new fan vent screens
  • Tested all pt’s and CPT’s
  • Troubleshoot bus duct heaters and remedy

The customer was brought back to 100% generation in the fastest time possible by UIS. The cost of rebuilding was thousands of dollars less than what a replacement would have cost. The reconstruction was completed in weeks as opposed to months. UIS had to fabricate some items that had long shipping times due to the rareness of the breaker. UIS’s breaker specialist was able to reassemble all new and refurbished items. He had several conversations with the manufacture of this item about how newer models of the same breaker are built to guide him in making some upgrades to improve the reliability. UIS got all items back online and installed with better reliability and protection than the initial installation. The customer was able to start generating power within 24hrs of the last part being delivered. This would not have happened so quickly without the specialized skills and knowledge of our UIS technicians.

UIS recommends for this customer to continue regular maintenance with UIS!