How to avoid another Atlanta Airport catastrophe?
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson is the world’s busiest airport, handling more than 2,500 flights and 250,000 passengers daily, connecting to 225 cities worldwide. Moreover, it went dark on December 19, 2017, at 1 pm local time. A total power failure took out lights, computers, and flight information screens.
Airlines ultimately canceled more than 1,000 flights on Sunday. Planes destined for Atlanta that hadn’t taken off stayed put, and some of those already in the air diverted to other airports. Those that did make it to Hartsfield-Jackson landed in limbo.
In a statement Monday, Georgia Power, the utility that provides Hartsfield-Jackson with electricity, said that "a piece of Georgia Power switchgear located in an underground electrical facility could have failed and started a fire."
Electrical breakdown is often associated with the failure of solid or liquid insulating materials in high-voltage transformers or capacitors in the electricity distribution grid, usually resulting in a short circuit or a blown fuse. Electrical breakdown can also occur across the insulators that suspend overhead power lines, within underground power cables, or lines arcing to nearby branches of trees.
The primary goal of maintenance is to avoid or mitigate the consequences of such breakdowns by preventing the failure before it occurs, which Planned Maintenance and Condition Maintenance help achieve. It is designed to preserve and restore equipment reliability by replacing worn components before they fail.
The most common tools used to measure equipment condition are:
1- Ultrasonic testing
2- Motor Current Analysis (MCA)
3- Thermography
4- EMSDs & Critical Assets Surveillance equipment
At IRISS, we provide our customers with unsurpassed quality at every touch point. We focus on what we do best by continuously improving infrared (IR) window technology and Ultrasonic testing sensors, building reliable products, exceeding customer expectations, remaining a science-based R&D company, and protecting our polymer IR windows through Our Unconditional Lifetime Warranty.
IRISS industrial-grade IR windows facilitate safer, more efficient inspections of energized electrical equipment than traditional crystal windows. Our award-winning IR window designs feature a durable, transparent polymer lens that allows Airborne ultrasound, Partial discharge, TEV, visual, UV, and short/mid/longwave IR spectrum inspections. Moreover, they are available in custom shapes, sizes, and colors to fit the needs of any application.
As solution providers, the team at IRISS brings a multitude of experience from world-class maintenance programs together to meet the individual needs of commercial, industrial, marine, power generation, and government maintenance programs.
Many technologies are offered to prevent a catastrophe; we encourage you to evaluate the options and implement critical asset surveillance solutions.
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