How an Effective Electrical Maintenance Program Can Protect Your Bottom Line

What’s the cost to your business if your electrical system unexpectedly fails? If your production equipment stops running, your computers switch off, phones go down and the lights go out.

Unplanned downtime can quickly see costs rack up as delays morph into lengthy delays. But the potential costs to your business are not just purely financial. If your security systems and IT equipment shut down because of a sudden loss of power, you could lose precious work and data. Expensive equipment could suffer permanent damage. And – even worse – electrical failure could lead to fire, death, or serious injury.

Many businesses are powered by large and complex electrical systems. And every year electrical equipment failures and malfunctions are the cause of millions of dollars of losses to companies, facilities, and industries around the world. A five-minute outage in 2013 is estimated to have cost Google about $545,000 while a 2020 survey by Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) found that a single hour of downtime can cost large enterprise organizations from $1 million to in excess of $5 million. 98% of all survey respondents estimated that one hour’s downtime a year can easily cost their firms over $100,000.

Although most modern power networks will have protective devices installed, there is still a risk of electrical failure. And some of the biggest causes of equipment failure are the result of defective electrical components. As soon as you install new electrical equipment, a process of normal deterioration begins. If left unchecked, that process can lead to malfunction or electrical failure. Which is why you need an effective maintenance program (EMP) for all your electrical equipment and components.

Article 4.4.1 of the National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 70B: Recommended Practice for Electrical Equipment Maintenance (2019 edition) states:

Deterioration can be accelerated by factors such as a hostile environment, overload, or severe duty cycle. An effective EMP identifies and recognizes these factors and provides measures for coping with them.

As well as normal deterioration, through an effective EMP, you can also detect and address other potential causes of equipment failure. Such as load changes or additions, changing voltage conditions, and improperly set or improperly selected protective devices.

But what does an effective EMP look like? And what will it involve in the context of your building or facility?

To help you hit on the best approach for the specific circumstances of your operation, here are seven key questions to ask yourself.

1. How cost-effective is your strategy for electrical maintenance?

It’s important to check your equipment regularly and not wait until something breaks down before you start planning your electrical maintenance.

Allowing electrical parts to run to failure will lead to longer and more costly delays. It’s far more cost-effective to take a proactive approach to your electrical maintenance and replace components before they become inefficient and a source of potential danger.

Here, rather than adopting a run-to-failure approach toward your electrical equipment, there are three different levels of planned maintenance you can choose to follow.

• Preventative maintenance – keeping on top of basic, routine matters, such as cleaning and replacing parts on a regular basis, removing rust, and topping up lubricant when it’s gotten low, to stop major problems developing.
• Predictive maintenance – looking for more subtle signs that trouble could be on the horizon and intervening before things have an opportunity to go wrong. For example, by using thermographic inspections which can help you detect any hot spots in need of urgent attention.
• Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) – carefully analyzing your electrical system, assessing each item’s failure modes and producing a specific maintenance program for every important electrical component.

At Aggreko, we would always recommend you use the RCM strategy. While this is the most involved and resource-heavy approach, it’s also by far the most effective maintenance system and the benefits to your business include improved safety, a much lower risk of shutdowns, and reduced repair costs in the long-term.

2. Do you have a clear picture of all the electrical equipment and components used in your facility?

If something goes wrong with your electrical system you need to be in a position to act fast.

That means keeping all your technical information in one central place. And not allowing your team to store tools, spare parts, or electrical plans in personal lockers or cupboards scattered around the facility.

It’s vital that you know where everything is and you can access it when you need to. It’s also advisable to keep all your technical information in one place and to standardize your technical drawings.

Not only must you be able to locate everything you need quickly, but there are three things you should record about each of your electrical components and equipment:

• how it’s used
• how you’re going to monitor its performance
• and what signs you need to look out for that might indicate wear, damage or failure.

An important first step will be to assign a dedicated person in the company to be your electrical maintenance manager. If you have a large business, building or facility, you may need quite a few electrical maintenance managers.

You should carry out thorough risk assessments so you have a complete picture of everything that could go wrong. This will include internal and external factors affecting your electrical system and what impact these could have, as well as potential knock-on effects.

Working with your CMMS as well as experienced operators and tradespeople, put together a history of electrical failures. This will help you work out what you’re up against.

3. Which of your components are business-critical?

A random approach to the order in which you tackle maintenance tasks will leave you at risk of lengthy downtime and escalating repair costs.

An infinitely better system is to work out how critical each of your electrical components are and rank them in order of priority. Once you’ve identified which components are the most business-critical, you should prepare a program for assessing them and undertaking any necessary repairs or replacements. You can then turn your attention to those components you’ve identified as being not as critical.

A word of caution, however. Just because something isn’t toward the top of your list of priorities doesn’t mean that it’s unimportant. It only takes the tiniest component to fail for your entire system to be knocked out. Or for a fire, serious injury, or even death to occur.

The types of components and equipment you need to check regularly include:

• Battery Stations and Chargers
• Circuit Breakers
• Disconnect Switches
• Transformers
• Aerial Cables, Bus Duct and Raceways
• Switchgear
• Surge Arresters
• UPS Systems
• Vacuum, Oil and Molded-Case Circuit Breakers
• Protective Relays

4. Which parts of your system will need to come offline for maintenance and how will you limit the impact on your operations?

Maintaining your electrical system properly inevitably involves taking some equipment and circuits offline. Nobody likes downtime, so many companies put this off for as long as possible.

But that approach is shortsighted because it can end up costing you a lot more when something breaks down. It’s a risky game to play but also one that isn’t necessary. Because with careful planning you won’t need to shut down your whole facility.

By putting in place a temporary setup and renting backup utilities, electrical equipment and a temporary generator, you can carry out maintenance in methodical stages – shifting your systems onto the electrical backup section by section. Do this and you can keep your electrical system in tip-top condition, without affecting your productivity or revenue streams.

5. Have you established a schedule for upgrades and regular repairs?

Don’t forget that it’s not just your electrical maintenance manager and your team who you need to include in your planning. If you’re going to schedule outages to coincide with your planned maintenance activities and secure the budgets you need to run your schedule effectively, you’ll need to get all major stakeholders on board.

Involve them in your plans and emphasize how important it is to tackle the work now as it will prevent larger problems in the long run. Make sure you speak with building and property managers so the occupants are fully informed about the work that’s going to be undertaken.

And integrate your maintenance and BOM processes. This will mean you can keep track of what parts you need to order and when, and the lead times on these.

6. Does your team know how to run the maintenance tasks and make use of any new technology or tools?

It’s vital you make sure your team knows exactly what to do and how to spot signs of danger. You don’t want to leave any room for doubt.

Don’t use vague wording when preparing preventative maintenance guidelines for your team. Instead, try to be as specific and practical as you can. For example, rather than your maintenance checklist saying ‘inspect brushes,’ it would be much more helpful to say ‘replace any brushes under 1 1/2 inches long.’

Some of the tasks you should train your staff to carry out include:

• checking all electrical components are dry, clean and cool
• inspecting all motors, motor starters, transformers, switches and circuit breakers for visible signs of deterioration, as well as checking their operating temperatures
• cleaning, lubricating and testing disconnect switches regularly.

And don’t let unqualified, untrained staff undertake important maintenance or inspection activities. Also, make sure your employees don’t try to maintain older circuit breakers’ arc chutes – these contain asbestos, so they should be replaced.

7. How often should you be scheduling maintenance?

Your maintenance program will need to cover all the electrical equipment in your building or facility. Precisely what that will involve will depend on the nature of your business and the types of equipment you use, so you will need to think carefully about your specific requirements and business-critical operations.

One thing is for certain, however. Every business needs to schedule regular inspections. And you should consult your national regulatory codes and standards for guidance on the frequency of those inspections.

In the United States, recommended maintenance intervals are set out in Annex L of NFPA 70B. For example, it recommends that you visually inspect, clean, and adjust low voltage air circuit breakers every year and carry out electrical tests on them every three years.

Final thoughts: getting the answers

An effective EPM minimizes unplanned outages and costly breakdowns of production equipment. It reduces accidents and saves lives by identifying and addressing impending problems before they become major headaches.

Now you know the right questions to ask yourself, it’s time to begin getting the answers that are specific to your business and your facility. The more attention you pay now to setting up the most effective EPM, the more likely your business-critical operations will be protected and accidents prevented.

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