Case Study: Electrical

With the proliferation of sensitive FM receivers and color television has come an increasing awareness of the problems posed by corona discharge causing interference in reception. Once it has been established that the interference source is not a nearby motor or other appliance, the problem is one of rapid location of the source of the corona interference, often found in transformers at power substations.

For years, the accepted procedure has involved two men. One man remained on the ground to operate a standard RF detector, while the other climbed the pole or ladder to the transformer to probe the suspect components with the "hot stick." The object was to find a component of the transmission system that caused a noticeable change in the RF emission when probed. In some situations, it was necessary to go over an entire local system, tightening all components when the exact noise could not be located. This procedure, of course, consumed a lot of unnecessary man-hours.

Now, the UL101 is used to eliminate one man and vastly speed up the whole operation. The RF detector is still used to locate the pole or immediate area of trouble, but once this has been accomplished, the inspector switches to the UL101. Corona discharge when heard through the UL101 sounds much the same as in the RF detector, but the unit is far more directional. Often the faulty component may be identified from the ground. Occasionally, it is necessary to partly climb the pole, but the use of the PowerBeam 300 has even eliminated this necessity.

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