Dennis McDougall

In my last Potpourri blog entry one of my fans (Frogophilliac) asked about the guys and frogs that have to carry the ball down the field?  Frogophilliac wanted to know if the Novinium operations team was staffed with rookies?  In the first of a series I will tell you today about our very own Dennis McDougall. More...

Dear all knowing frog-

I know you are experienced, but what about the experience of Novinium?  Wasn’t Novinium started in 2003?

Cautious in the Show-me-state

Dear Cautious-

A famous frog once observed,

“Experience resides within individuals, not within institutions.”

Editor’s note:  Individuals in this quote include the genus and species rana catesbeiana and homo sapiens.

If the 2009-2010 coaching staff and players of the Super Bowl winning New Orleans Saints were to move to St. Louis, it would be St. Louis that would have the experience, not New Orleans.  When Novinium was founded in 2003 the founders were the Rejuvenation Super Bowl folks.  My colleague, Glen Bertini, has been in the rejuvenation business longer than anyone in the world – period.  He has more rejuvenation patents than anyone in the world – period.  He has published more peer reviewed technical papers on the subject than anyone in the world – period.  Another founder and colleague of mine past on to the big marsh in the heavens in late 2009, his name is Gary Vincent and he is the original inventor of modern injection fluids.  All of the commercially significant technologies used throughout the world were invented by Novinium Founders.  In fact, collectively the Novinium team has over 200 people-years of experience at Dow Corning (where the technology was originally conceived), at UTILX, and at Novinium.  If you include froggie-years the number swells to over 230!

I was born in Washington State, but I have a little Missourian in me too.  When someone claims their institution has years of experience, have them fill out this list for you and compare it to that of Novinium:

*froggie years

Experience counts,

Thermo

P.S.  If the Saints moved to St. Louis would they be called the Saint Louis Saints?  Or would that be redundant?

Oh mother of all that is green-

Do Novinium Ultrinium™ fluids contain the carcinogen, developmental toxin, and male reproductive toxin benzene as Perficio™ 011 fluid does?

Sleepless in Seattle

Dear Sleepless-

Sleep well in your burrow tonight.  No. 

Perficio 011 fluid is based upon phenylmethyldimethoxysilane (PMDMS) fluid disclosed by U.S. Patent 4,766,011 and invented by a Novinium founder over two decades ago.  PMDMS-based fluid includes up to 100 ppm of benzene, because the PMDMS is a reaction product of an industrial process that begins with benzene.

In contrast, Novinium Ultrinium brand products include starting materials, which are not known carcinogens, developmental toxins, or reproductive toxins, because it is virtually impossible to remove all traces of incompletely consumed starting reagents.

Sleeping near Seattle,

Thermo

Dear Rotund One-

Repeated operation of reclosures to find overhead faults is an example of an “Abnormal Operational Excursion” in your warranty language, which suspends the warranty's remedy.  We only use one shot autoreclosures, but sometimes we close a fuse feeding the U/G back in only to have it open again because we misinterpreted the fault location.  Do we have to track this for 120 days?

Assessing in Alberta

Dear Alberta-

 With my cold blood you won’t be seeing me in your neck of the woods in January.  Summers are great; there are a lot of mosquitoes to eat.

No matter what the temperature, there are no record retention requirements imposed by our warranty.  The intent is that the circuit owner – that’s you – not perform abusive operating practices.  Specifically it appears that you are referring to the underlined text below taken from Novinium’s standard warranty language.  Note that the recloser operations are abnormal only if the recloser is operated to clear overhead faults.  Most frogs and people would agree that this is not a “best practice.”  Life insurance doesn’t payout if the insured commits suicide – practice safe operations!

Reassuringly yours,

Thermo

Abnormal Operational Excursion(s) includes non-routine maintenance or operations prior to the segment failure such as: (1) conductor currents or neutral current greater than circuit design constraints; (2) operating temperature greater than circuit design; (3) repeated operations of re-closers, whether manually or automatically operated, as a method to clear overhead faults; (4) physical manipulation of the segment including dig-ins; or (5) any other operational practice, act of a third party, or act of God (except lightning strikes), which is believed to degrade the reliability of connected circuits.

Dear Thermo-

We use a 10kV hipot DC to sectionalize URD faults. We actually use this on several sections at a time so it will go through good sections of cable until it reaches the bad section. We split the run of cables fed by a common fuse in half and hipot one way (could be 4 or 5 sections of cable) and if it is not found we hipot in the other direction. Do we have to wait 120 days after this and if so how do we track it?

Assessing in Alberta

Dear Alberta-

We have corresponed before … frogs might start talking, and I am not comfortable with interspecies relationships.

There are no record retention requirements imposed by our warranty. The individual who submits a warranty claim might query the operations folks to learn if there has been any fault activity over the past 4 months in the adjoining circuits.   It is well established in the literature and in IEEE standards, that applying 10kV DC on aged polymeric cables is inherently destructive.  If that body of literature is not easily available to you, I can provide you with the appropriate references. (Just write to me again, but use a different pseudonym.)  There are less destructive ways to sectionalize faults.  For example, if you use the same approach, but at 1kV there is no issue with our warranty. The amount of damage from imposing DC is proportional to the voltage squared times the time, so 1kV is 100 times less damaging than 10kV imposed over the same length of time. There are also sectionalizing arc reflection TDRs that can identify the failed section with a few very brief pulses.

The best idea is to avoid this situation entirely. Treat or replace 100% of the at-risk cable segments in a loop and the probability of a failure in the loop will be dramatically lower. Avoid rejuvenating only the easy-to-treat cable, as half-steps will only get you to half-reliability.

Love and kisses,

Thermo