Abstract
M.Ing. (Engineering Management)
Electricity is a crucial key component in every day life influencing the economy,
safety; health, productivity and comfort just to name a few. The benefits and
importance of electricity can be easily taken for granted by the consumer.
Towards the end of 2007, South Africa suffered numerous power outages and that
lead to the implementation of load shedding by Eskom, the electricity utility in South
Africa, in order to manage the shortage of electricity.
Electricity utilities constantly make decisions that affect the cost, reliability and
quality of their services. Therefore engineering designs and maintenance strategies
should be updated frequently. The benefits of these updates to the system would have
a significant performance improvement in regards to reliability and the quality of the
electricity. The outline of asset management is therefore to focus on the business
assets so that the organisation could serve the customers effectively.
As a result, the focus for the research is to develop a life cycle management plan for
one of the main assets utilised in the distribution network namely power transformers.
The research would include a study of power transformers and customs that could be
used to improve the reliability, logistics, safety and the capital investments of the
network. Power transformers are static equipment, and failure rate is very low compared to
other assets found in substations. As a result of their sizes, transformers requires
more time and special arrangements should a failure occur. A risk and condition
analysis was conducted on transformers and the results and conclusions were
discussed.