Third Party

Dear Alert Amphibian-

Can you provide third party data demonstrating that cable injection will extend the life cycle of underground cables? My colleagues and I are preparing for a rate filing with the OEB and we are looking for some firepower, facts and figures to bolster our case for additional cable injection monies for 2014 and beyond.

Seeking help,

Organizing in Ontario

Dear Organized-

I can think of four “flavors” of third-party data.

Flavor 1

Flavor 1 includes data gathered by third parties at the behest of a firm engaged in rejuvenation. The third party is independent, and is generally working for the technology supplier. There is an ample supply of this type of data, spanning over two-and-a-half decades. As an example of this type of data, consider Figure 3 of the paper published by my colleagues at the IEEE International Symposium on Electrical Insulation in September 2004…

New Developments in Solid Dielectric Life Extension Technology 

Figure 3 shows the substantial improvement in AC break-down performance seven days after injection at Cable Technology Laboratories. There is an abundance similar Flavor 1 third-party data. A compilation of that data can be found in the bibliography presented at the NETA Powertest Electrical Conference on March 17, 2008.

History and Status of Silicone Injection Technology with Bibliography

This paper provides 50 references including flavors 1, 2, and 3 of third-party data.

Flavor 2

The second flavor of third-party data are results reported by end-users. There have been several North American utilities that have reported their post-rejuvenation reliability over multiyear periods. The IEEE’s Insulated Conductor’s Committee (ICC) Discussion Group C30 is compiling several of these case studies as part of its efforts to craft a Guide entitled, “Extending the Life of Power Cables in the Field.” One exemplary data set was published by Northeast Utilities at the spring 2008 ICC. I have attached an excerpt of the ICC meeting minutes below. Over a nine year period from 1999 to 2007, the failure rate of the post-rejuvenated cable was 0.7% and the failure rate of the non-rejuvenated cable was 12%. Novinium’s failure rate is about half of the failure rate enjoyed with this older technology – see flavor 3.

R.Vencus. Cable Injection Program CL-P 2008.pdf (8.13 kb)

Flavor 3

The third flavor of third-party data is the overall failure rate of rejuvenated cables. Circuit owners have an incentive to report their post-injection reliability issues as they get cash for doing so! Novinium transparently publishes these statistics at …

http://www.novinium.com/Lessons.aspx

Novinium’s post rejuvenation failure rate is less than that of new cable! Check out my March 23, 2012 post, “Better Than New” to learn more.

Flavor 4

The fourth flavor of third-party data would be a Coke vs. Pepsi, side-by-side “taste test” of different rejuvenation technologies funded by electrical circuit owners and conducted by a third-party laboratory. There is good news, there is bad news, and some new that falls between good and bad. The good news is such a test was arranged by NEETRAC (National Electric Energy Testing, Research & Applications Center) sponsoring firms including: AEP, BG&E, ConEd, Oncor, FPL, Exelon, Southern Company, PEPCO, Southwire, and Snohomish Public Utility District. The bad news is that only Coke showed up for the taste test! The other technology supplier participated in the experimental design, but withdrew just as the testing was to commence citing, “Business and commercial reasons.” I will leave it for your contemplation why the other guys would not want to participate in a side-by-side test. The test proceeded with Novinium only. The news that is not bad, but not ideal is that even though the test was completed about two years ago, NEETRAC has not yet published the results in anything other than draft form. An excerpt of the draft NEETRAC report provides the bottom line of the testing:

“ … the stress at which the rejuvenated cables fail is higher than for the non rejuvenated cables: 26 kV/mm and 16 kV/mm, respectively. These stresses are taken at the 50^th percentile (median). Moreover, it would appear that the [Novinium] rejuvenated cables have a threshold for failure at 4.5 kV/mm whereas there is no threshold for the Non Rejuvenated cables."

The reported performance advantage was measured after about 18 months of accelerated aging – well beyond the originally planned twelve-month experimental plan. The electrical stress of a typical 175 mil insulated URD cable energized at about 8kV to ground is 1.8kV/mm. The treated failure threshold is 2.5-times typical operating voltages even after extended thermal and electrical accelerated aging.

Ready for any party,

Thermonuclear Frog

Honesty – Best Policy

Dear ample amphibian-

A gentleman from UTILX says that while he worked for Dow Corning Corporation in the early 1990’s he and his colleagues tested the materials that Novinium uses today and that Dow Corning rejected their use because these materials were second-rate, that is they did not work as well as the PMDMS (or phenylmethyldimethoxysilane), the main ingredient of CableCURE^®/XL fluid.

What say you?

California Dreamer

Dear Dreamer-

There are three assertions being made by an Individual From Competition (IFC) who knows better:

Assertion 1: Dow Corning tested the materials that Novinium uses today,

Assertion 2: The performance of those materials was second-rate in comparison to the main component of CableCURE/XL, namely PMDMS, and

Assertion 3: Even with all the other process and catalyst improvements Novinium has made, Novinium’s fluid remains second-rate.

pieces of eight

by t. b. frog

 

you are not the first person, to whom this dream has been spun,

i was not even a glimmer in my father’s eye when this work was done;

somebody is indeed dreaming, but it is easy to set the record straight,

consider these pieces, there are eight.

 

Piece One: Assertion without proof

Let’s say that you had data which demonstrated your competitor’s product was inferior to your own. Wouldn’t you publish it? IFC, come clean … show us the data you purport to possess!

Piece Two: Testimony

To get the straight scoop I went to my colleague, Glen Bertini. Mr. Bertini directed the early work at Dow Corning (circa 1992). He is the guy who conceived of CableCURE/XL fluid, and he is a co-inventor of the materials that Novinium uses today. Mr. Bertini knows that all three of IFC’s assertions are not entirely forthright. The silane materials that Novinium uses today are listed unambiguously on the Ultrinium™ 732 and Ultrinium™ 733 material safety data sheets (MSDS). These materials are …

• tolylethylmethyldimethoxysilane (+ isomer of same & 8-carbon alkoxy analog)

• cyanobutylmethyldimethoxysilane (and 8-carbon alkoxy analog)

Mr. Bertini provides a sworn and notarized declaration (link is nearby) asserting that neither of these materials were tested by Dow Corning or UTILX during the 22-year period from July 1980 to December 2001.

80-20120627_GJB_Declaration.pdf (281.40 kb)

Piece Three: Challenge

Mr. Bertini hereby challenges IFC to a public debate exploring the merits of these assertions. The debate will be recorded in its entirety and provided, unedited on YouTube for the entire world to see and hear. Novinium will bear all of the production costs and will travel to meet IFC at a venue of his choice – any time, anywhere.

Piece Four: Side-by-side taste test – Round I

IFC's employer had an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of its technology when NEETRAC, NEETRAC’s sponsoring circuit owners, and other NEETRAC-affiliated industry leaders invited UtilX to participate in a side-by-side laboratory experiment together with Novinium. UtilX helped craft an experimental protocol, but withdrew its participation when the experiment was to actually begin. That experiment is complete and included the only rejuvenation firm willing to share their post-injection results in a truly independent experiment – that would be Novinium. UtilX demurred, citing “business and commercial reasons.”

Piece Five: Side-by-side taste test – Round II

If UTILX now regrets that it did not participate in the NEETRAC side-by-side test, Novinium will grant it a Mulligan. Novinium will eagerly participate in a new experiment, which directly compares the post-injection performance of UTILX’s products against Novinium products. It’s not too late to end the debate, but you have to promise not to withdraw at the eleventh hour this time! Novinium will fund the experiment, which will be executed by an independent laboratory with a substantially similar protocol as was previously agreed by UTILX.

Piece Six:  Analogous materials are not second-rate

It should be clear to the critical reader that Novinium’s modern fluids were never tested by Dow Corning or UTILX, but what about the second claim – the claim that the untested materials were second rate? If the materials were never tested, the assertion seems a little silly, but there is another less-than-honest dimension to this second assertion. IFC is suggesting that phenylmethyldimethoxysilane (PMDMS) utilized in CableCURE/XL fluid and Novinium’s own Perficio™ 011 fluid is first-rate or has no peers. Let’s test that assertion against the following statement proffered by UTILX in its paper, “Failures in Silicone-treated German Cables Due to an Unusual Aluminum-Methanol Reaction,” published at the IEEE, PES, ICC in October 2001. To wit …

“In those experiments there was not a statistically significant difference between the performance of methoxy silanes and their ethoxy equivalents. For example, the screening experiments included phenylmethyldimethoxysilane, tolylmethyldimethoxysilane, dimethyldimethoxysilane, and vinylmethyldiethoxysilane, which all had very similar performance profiles. The ultimate choice of the alkoxy group was not driven by performance, but was rather driven by commercial availability.”

PMDMS was chosen because it was cheap and easy to come by! UTILX names several materials for which “there was not a statistically significant difference between the [dielectric] performance” from the PMDMS that IFC now suggest is the one-and-only first-rate performer. The careful reader with some background in chemistry will note a similarity between the named tolylmethyldimethoxysilane and Novinium patented (U.S. 7,658,808 & 8,101,034) tolylethylmethyldimethoxysilane – different only in the two extra methylene units encompassed in the “ethyl.” The two materials are not identical, but they are analogous. The reported data contradict IFC’s second assertion. Novinium has done many experiments with its actual materials and these materials consistently outperform PMDMS. Check out my post of March 15, 2011 to learn how those two methylene units boost post-injection reliability of tolylethylmethyldimethoxysilane using “Chain Entanglement.” But there is more, not only are there unidentified materials in the data published by Dow Corning and reproduced in the illustration nearby, but there are materials which are not disclosed at all. Some unidentified materials performed better than PMDMS. IFC should publish all of the results – even if those results do not support his contentions.

Piece Seven:  Devil in the Details

In the illustration nearby I provide a compilation of data from the two cited sources – both are Dow Corning/UTILX documents. These data are a subset of the data to which IFC is undoubtedly referring when he makes his assertions. As you can see from Mr. Bertini’s Declaration there is even more data, which if it were made public would cast an even darker shadow on the assertions of IFC. It’s interesting data for sure, but it does not support the notion that PMDMS is particularly special. There are a variety of other materials, which show statistically similar performance. But what is the ACBD of the y-axis? It’s the AC breakdown strength (50% probability) after 6 months of immersion in ambient temperature water and 2.5X rated voltage (20 kV). Is that test protocol a good predictor of performance after 20 years? After 40? Of course, not. To suggest so would be like declaring that the horse in first place at the first turn will win the derby. The testing to which IFC refers is a short-term screening experiment and cannot discriminate long-term performance.

Piece Eight:  Overlooking the catalyst

Not only was the experiment woefully short and not thermally accelerated, all of the silanes tested were catalyzed with 0.2%_w titanium(IV) isopropoxide (TIP). Novinium does not use TIP because it suffers from an unacceptably low catalytic efficiency. It’s about 39% inefficient. Novinium’s patented catalyst technology is 98% efficient. See my previous posts on the subject of catalytic efficiency at …

Catalytic Considerations – Component I (January 3, 2011)

Catalytic Considerations – Component II (January 5, 2011)

Novinium’s master scientists have not tested every water reactive material shown in the illustration with our patented catalyst technology, but we have tested all the commercially important ones. Without exception, long-term performance, what I like to call persistence, is substantially improved by the application of Novinium’s U.S. Patent 7,700,871.

There is an old Madison Avenue adage, “If you don’t have anything to say – sing it!” Which of the following do you like the best for the IFC Corollary? (check all that apply)

ü  If you don’t have any facts – wing it!

ü  If the facts don’t support your position – obfuscate!

ü  If you won’t spend money on R&D, cite 20-year-old data out of context!

Finally, I have a selfish appeal directly to IFC, who is one of my most loyal readers. Don’t change your story one iota! The reason that so many circuit owners tell us of your tale, is that it isn’t credible. Send me your comments and I will publish them here unedited.

Credibility is transparency,

T. B. Frog

80-20120627_GJB_Declaration.pdf (281.40 kb)

Failure Causes II

In yesterday’s post, “Failure Causes I,” I provided a partial answer to an inquiry from Colorado Querier. Colorado sought to understand if rejuvenation technology was appropriate for the “many types of aging factors” from which his firm’s circuits might suffer. In yesterday’s post we dealt with circuit failures caused by connected components, rather than the cable itself. Today we will focus on cable failures.  First a disclaimer – it is often difficult to determine with 100% certainty the cause of a cable failure in field conditions. A cable failure is a destructive event that usually vaporizes its own root cause. Those who analyze field failures can examine the cable near its fault for neighboring defects. If a defect or defects are found, the examiner may infer without certainty that a similar defect may have been the root cause of the actual fault. If no substantial defects are found the root cause will surely remain unknowable.

I emphasized “substantial” in the last sentence because at a small enough scale there are always defects. Water trees grow in all medium voltage solid dielectric cables exposed to moist conditions. Unless you have hermetically sealed metal sheaths, those would be your cables! Water treeing is an oxidative process, but even where there are no water trees, oxidation of the polymer occurs, because oxygen and other oxidizing agents are ubiquitous. Free radicals facilitate oxidation and are common in nature. Cosmic radiation, radioactive decay, and other natural processes spawn free radicals around the clock. On top of those chemical processes there are mechanical strains placed on the cable by thermal cycling driven by load cycling.  Such thermal cycling creates micro-voids in the middle radius of the insulation driven by the “Molecular Thermodynamics of Water in Direct-Buried Power Cables.” Click here to view the paper by the same name from IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine (Nov/Dec 2006). The collection of voids formed this way are referred to as a halo.  I provide an illustration of a halo and water tree nearby.

What are the primary causes of failure and how is each addressed or not addressed by rejuvenation?

In the frogograph nearby, I show you a subset of field reliability data (Editors note: I have come to call this kind of data – “real, real world!”) gathered by Dr. Steennis of KEMA. The simple logarithmic equation explains 78% of the relationship between maximum water tree length, expressed as a percentage of the insulation thickness and reliability expressed as AC breakdown strength.  AC breakdown strength is not a perfect surrogate for cable reliability, but it’s a pretty good one!  Lightning bolts appear next to each cable sample that failed in service. Water tree length is the single best predictor of reliability. In the same work, Dr. Steennis and his colleagues demonstrated that the laboratory failure of the field aged cables always occurred at the longest water tree, just as a chain fails at its weakest link.

Well over three-quarters of solid dielectric cable failures are caused by water trees. Rejuvenation technology was originally designed to address water tree degradation specifically. In fact, rejuvenation has a proven track record of treating the biggest and ugliest water trees on the planet.  Click here, to check out my October 5, 2011 post, “Water Trees – Too Big to Fail?” In my third post of this series we will examine the other less important root causes of cable failure and consider whether or not those root causes can or cannot be addressed by the application of rejuvenation technology.

Master of Reliability,

T. Bull Frog

Reference	Citation
Steennis work	Steennis et al, “Water Treeing in Service Aged Cables, Experience and Evaluation Procedure,” IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 5, No.1, January 1990.
CPS Energy (San Antonio, TX)	Mokry, Chatterton, Carter, Sibbald, Clemmer, Bertini & George, “Cable Fault Prevention Using Dielectric Enhancement Technology,” Jicable, June 1995.  Republished in REE Spécial Câbles.
Essent (EGD/Edon, Netherlands)
OG&E (Oklahoma Gas & Electric)
Virginia Power (VEPCO)
Florida Power & Light (FPL)
Cable Tech. Labs (CTL, New Jersey)	Bertini, “New Developments in Solid Dielectric Life Extension Technology”, IEEE International Symposium on Electrical Insulation (ISEI), September 2004.  Click here to view.