Suitable for Treatment

Dear B.F.

We’ve taken some photographs of cable samples identified with off-line PD testing.  I was hoping to get your opinion of the cable and if injection would be able to address these issues.

·        On two samples, we found the XLP insulation was a greenish color.  We’ve never found cables discolored before and it had an odd odor.  Upon wafering and dying the sample, quite a few trees were found.

·        On three samples, we found spots where a hole was burned through the semi-con layer and dirt had gotten between the semi-con and insulation, causing some deep pitting.

I’ve attached some photos of the issues.  Neither of these cables has been treated, but can they? Let me know what you think.

Wishing you well,

Wisconsin

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Dear Wisconsin-

First off – green is a lovely color and you should be proud of your sample’s hue. The green color proves that the insulation compound manufacturer included anti-oxidants in its formulation and is generally an indication of recent heat exposure. The sulfur-based anti-oxidants break into by-products as they do their job. Some of these by-products absorb red light, leaving a predominantly yellow to green hue. The insulation may by 4201 made by Union Carbide, now Dow Wire & Cable. Click here to check out a fact sheet put out by the Dow folks called:

Color Indicates Presence of Antioxidants in XLPE Insulation Compounds

With regard to the odor, I can’t answer definitively for two reasons. One, you did not send me a sample and two, frogs are not known for their olfactory prowess. I can, however, speculate. The sulfur-containing anti-oxidant by-products are called thiols or mercaptans and have strong garlic-like odor. I have a cat at my house with an exceptionally keen nose. If you send me a stinky sample I can ask her to identify the chemistry involved. I hope it does not smell like tuna fish — she might gnaw on it. See "rats" below.

With regard to the water trees, you will find those in every solid dielectric cable. Water trees are the predominant cause of solid dielectric cable failure. Fortunately, Novinium provides fluids that can reverse the damage caused by water trees and replace the anti-oxidants that have been consumed over decades of field aging.

·        Click here to learn how you can know that water trees are the predominant cause of cable failures.

·        Click here to learn how you can be confident that rejuvenation will reverse the damage caused by water trees.

·        Click here to learn how Novinium^®-brand Ultrinium™ fluid can replenish the anti-oxidants in aged cable.

Deep Pitting

I don’t know if the cable with the holes in it smelled like garlic, but the rodents that chewed on it must have liked the odor.  I doubt that the meal was satisfying. I am fond of rodents. An adult mouse fills my belly for the better part of a week, but I might have taken a pass on the gal that was chewing on your cable. Shreds of polyethylene in her belly would end up in mine and would undoubtedly upset my delicate digestion. I suspect the rat stopped chewing when she started to feel a tingling in her mouth – those were partial discharges. Persistence would have led to an untimely end. That’s how I know the rat was a female. A male rat would not have been smart enough to back off when he felt the tingles … in fact they probably would have only encouraged him more.

Here is a question for you, Wisconsin. How many cables had to be examined to find these rodent bites? If rodent damage is rampant in your service territory, off-line partial discharge testing might be a useful tool to find where the rats reside. It is true, that rejuvenation cannot address rodent damage, but how prevalent is this failure mode? For some insight on that question check out my three-part postings of January 2012 …

Failure Causes I, Failure Causes II, and Failure Causes III.

The Novinium masters of reliability have been involved in the injection of many millions of cable feet. Cables with water trees, with or without interesting color and odor, are handled easily and these represent the frog’s share of the root causes of cable failure. Add in component issues addressed by rejuvenation and a tiny minority of potential issues are left unaddressed. It is for this reason that more than 99.4% of all cable treated by Novinium enjoy failure-free reliability.

Never put anything in your mouth that can kill you,

T. B. F.

Failure Causes III

In my January 24^th 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. We learned that 39% or more of all circuit failures are component failures and that these reliability issues are directly addressed with a rejuvenation program.  In yesterday’s post, “Failure Causes II,” we learned that more than 78% of the cable failures, which represent over 60% of the circuit failures are directly caused by water trees.  78% times 60% yields 47%. Water trees are the root cause of more than 47% of circuit reliability issues. Taken together (39% plus 47%) component issues and water trees account for more than 86% of all circuit reliability issues. We could stop right there, because 86% could be characterized as the vast majority. We could stop right there, because of the over 100,000,000 feet of cable rejuvenated over the last two-and-a-half decades, over 99% continue to provide reliable service. Cables treated by Novinium enjoy a post-injection failure rate less than half that of the industry-wide figure. We could stop there, but we won’t. The Novinium masters of reliability strive for post-rehabilitation reliability perfection.

If component issues and water trees represent the frog’s share of reliability root causes, what are the secondary issues? And how does rejuvenation technology address, or not address, these issues?

Neutral Corrosion

The occurrence of neutral corrosion within the population of bare neutral cables is 100%.  But don’t despair, the occurrence of neutral corrosion that creates safety or reliability issues is an order of magnitude less significant than circuit failures from all other causes – that is, generally 1-2% of cables suffer substantive neutral issues. Click here to check out my July 7, 2010 post along with its links to other published works. Even though the neutral corrosion issue is less significant than many assume, the good news is that neutral corrosion is both detectable and addressable. In fact, the Novinium masters routinely detect and repair neutral corrosion.

Thermal Issues

When cables are heavily loaded over sustained periods the insulation loses anti-oxidants and plasticizers. Oxidative degradation and polymer embrittlement contribute to a decrease in dielectric strength and in severe, but rare, cases may lead to cracking of the insulation. Designed to stay in the insulation for decades after injection, Novinium’s Ultrinium™ 73X fluids include anti-oxidants (AOs) and plasticizers. These materials all but halt oxidative degradation and embrittlement. Anti-oxidants have also been proven to slow the rate of water tree growth and increase the inception voltage of electrical trees. Click here to learn more about anti-oxidants in my March 14, 2011 post, “AO, AO … It’s home from work we go.” If the insulation gets hot enough the conductor may migrate and the insulation will become eccentric. These eccentricities usually manifest themselves at tight bending radii. The Novinium masters identify and remove most excessively bent cable sections. These most commonly occur near terminations or accessible splices and these areas are inspected during pre-injection preparation. Novinium^® brand rejuvenation addresses all of these thermal issues.

Halo

Halos are unavoidable when a cable is thermally cycled in the presence of water. 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 is referred to as a halo. In the absence of water trees or some other defects, a halo does not lead to failure, because the halo size is limited by the molecular thermodynamics of water in the polymer. None-the-less, rejuvenation reverses most of the dielectric degradation caused by halos by filling the micro-voids with more compatible organo-silicones. Novinium^® brand rejuvenation addresses halos.

Manufacturing Defects

Voids, protrusions, contaminants, eccentricities, and skipped shields are “unwanted features” of a new cable. With the possible exception of skipped shields all of these unwanted features are in every cable. Fortunately for your newer purchases the magnitude of the defects is low enough that the cable can provide reliable service for its design life. For both your new cable purchases and your 30- and 40-year-old legacy purchases if the defects are large enough the cables will fail early in their lives … these kinds of defects yield what statisticians call infant mortality.  Your decade-old cables have been screened by operation of substantive manufacturing defects – those that will actually cause a failure without an accompanying water tree. In short, manufacturing defects are everywhere, but in legacy cable their manifestation is a water tree growing from the defect. Rejuvenation directly address the water tree and Novinium Ultrinium™ 73X brand rejuvenation includes patented stress grading components, which directly address stress-enhancing defects. Click the links below to learn more about stress grading …

Installation Defects

Excessively tight bending radius, excessive pull force, and exterior abuse rendered during installation are analogous to manufacturing defects. Serious problems manifest themselves shortly after installation. If an installation defect survived for several decades it is not so serious that it cannot be addressed by rejuvenation technology, particularly technology that includes Novinium patented stress grading chemistry.

Physical Damage (post-installation)

Frost thrust, dig-ins, and critter attacks can occur at any time. At Novinium we have seen insect attacks and rodent attacks. Amphibians have never been a problem. In the case of critter attacks, these usually occur near terminations and hence are often discovered and rectified as a routine matter during a rejuvenation program.  Dig-ins and frost thrust are generally not discoverable, but follow a pattern similar to manufacturing and installation defects. Cables struck with significant damage fail shortly after the event, insignificant damage may be mitigated by rejuvenation. In summary, rejuvenation mitigates, but does not prevent all failures resulting from post-installation physical damage. Rejuvenation with stress grading technology such as that found in patented Novinium Ultrinium™ 73X brand rejuvenation fluids provides superior mitigation.

Testing Induced

My faithful readers know that this frog is not a devotee of diagnostic testing. The fundamental problem can be summed up thusly:  None of the technologies can reliably discriminate between cables which will fail in short order and those which will not. The rejuvenation program alternative puts a final nail in the diagnostic coffin, because components will all be changed anyway. What sense does it make to find out if the components are good or bad? Since over 99% of rejuvenated cables don’t fail when no diagnostics are utilized and the extension of life is 5-20 times longer that the retesting horizon, paying for a diagnostic is difficult to justify.  If all of that were not enough many diagnostics test induce defects! Electrical trees can be initiated directly by high voltage methods such as off-line partial discharge or indirectly by inducing space charge with DC methods. Even though it makes no technical sense to test, rejuvenation does mitigate the damage testing inflicts on cables if rejuvenation is given some time to improve the dielectric performance of the cable.  For SPR that is about a week; for UPR it is best to wait for at least a year. To explore diagnostic testing further do a key word search on my blog for “diagnostic testing.”

Insulation Shield Separation

Loss of adhesion between the insulation shield and the insulation is a rare occurrence and is the only fault mode not addressed or at least mitigated by rejuvenation. This frog can count on one front paw, and I only have four toes on that paw, the number of failures where the loss of insulation shield adhesion was the cause of failure. These few observed failures suggest that chemical contamination of the soil causes swelling of the shield material and loss of adhesion. Transformer oil or motor oil spills are suspected culprits. If you have a bunch of these kinds of failures on your hands, you have a potential Love Canal situation and you are going to be excavating the whole neighborhood.  No need to treat the cable.

Summary

Advanced cable rejuvenation provided by the masters at Novinium has a proven track record of 99.4% post-rejuvenation reliability. Almost all known causes of solid dielectric underground cable reliability problems are either directly addressed or mitigated. The sole exception is insulation shield separation, which is incredibly rare.

Broad Spectrum Reliability,

T. Bull Frog

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

Failure Causes I

Dear Beautiful Bull Frog-

I wonder if you have any information I could use to help address a concern I have heard in my company.  That concern is that a 30 to 40 year old cable may have accumulated degradation due to many types of aging factors. Cable injection may not substantially address these factors and injection may not provide a very great increase of life extension for a very old cable.

Colorado Querier

Thank you for the inquiry Colorado. That is actually a great inquiry, because it will take me more than a single post to answer! The first question we have to address is:  Which of the two categories of failures plague your solid dielectric circuits?  In the figure nearby I ponder this question, because only you can know? At Jicable 2007, the International Conference on Insulated Power Cables, Nigel Hampton of NEETRAC (National Electric Energy Testing Research and Applications Center) provided some survey data from their circuit owner members in a paper titled, “Validating cable diagnostic tests.”  Perceived failure experience of NEETRAC member companies suggested that on average, 55% of the failures in the population are cable failures, 39% are accessory failures, and 6% are unknown.  The perception of Utility 21 is that almost all of its failures are cable failures and very few of its failures are accessories. The perception of Utility 4 is reversed.  Utility 4 perceives that about 4 out of 5 of its failures are component failures and 20% or less are cable failures.

If the primary cause of your failures are components, consider which components are failing – terminations or splices or both. There are two injection paradigms, namely Unsustained Pressure Rejuvenation (UPR) and Sustained Pressure Rejuvenation (SPR). See “How to Inject” for more on UPR and SPR. Novinium is the only firm in the world that can use both paradigms. UPR attempts to flow through existing splices, so it is not the best choice if your firm experiences splice reliability issues. SPR replaces 100% of the splices and terminations with modern state-of-the-art components. UPR replaced all of the dead-front terminations, so if those are problematic components for you, UPR will address that issue. Novinium has made several improvements to the safety and reliability of dead-front terminations used for injection. I will describe those improvements another day.

In summary, if your reliability issues are primarily component issues, rejuvenation directly addressed these with systematic component replacement. Depending upon your specific circumstances, the Novinium masters of reliability will help you decide which injection paradigm best addresses your reliability issues at the lowest capital cost.

If your reliability issues are cable-centric, check out my next post in this series, Failure Causes II, where we will ask the question:  What are the primary causes of cable failure and how is each addressed or not addressed by rejuvenation?

Master of Reliability,

Thermo Bull Frog