One of the goals that our engineering department set was to establish our team as the “neighborhood engineers” – a valued resource that customers and partners can turn to for advice or in times of need. As an example, we received an urgent call from a Mid-Atlantic utility regarding difficulties with a competitor’s 230kV, 3000 amp vertical break switch.  By the time our team was contacted and engaged, the center phase was completely burnt and had been jumpered out as a temporary solution.

As the customer had no relevant drawings on hand, I went to the site to assess the situation, photograph the affected components, and develop a plan of action. As a first step, we provided a retro-fit of the competitor’s live parts.  During the outage to install the replacement live parts, I determined that the root cause of the problem was lost motion in the drive linkage assembly.  The operating effort of the switch exceeded the capabilities of the outboard bearing, causing bowing in the vertical operating pipe which then resulted in the switch not being closed properly.  Once the problem was identified, new outboard bearing assemblies and offset bases were ordered from the factory and expedited for next day delivery.  The new components were installed.  To properly complete the project a control drawing and bill-of-material were created for the customer’s future reference. Most happily for our customer, there was no impact on the scheduled outage.

Our extensive field service, including retro-fits and upgrades, provides our team with invaluable experience.  Pascor Atlantic is unique in our ability to quickly develop a plan of action and a long-term solution.  The customer has since bought eight sets of controls to update other units and resolve years-old problems and become a true believer in Pascor Atlantic’s team of “neighborhood engineers.”

Jeremy Moore