GE PROGRAMMA

All over the world, vital aspects of our daily life are dependent on uninterrupted and smooth supply of electricity. Programma Electric founded in 1976 provides complete solutions for maintenance and testing of primary and secondary equipment in transmission and distribution substations. This includes instruments, software and services. GE acquired the company in 2001. Some of the major products of GE Programma are:

Testing Protective relays

As power grids get bigger and carry more power, the need for quick, reliable disconnection when faults occur becomes more and more urgent. The purpose of protective relay equipment is to sense fault states and trip circuit breakers. If a fault is not corrected early, personal injuries and serious damage can occur. Major representatives of this type of equipment are:

Sverker 750/760	Freja 300
CA3/CA1/CA1H	PAM 360
MAGNUS

Sverker 650

Testing Battery Systems

TORKEL 800	TORKEL 820
TMC4001	TMC2001d

Batteries provide standby power in many situations in the event of a power failure. Batteries thus keep many vital subsystems operating such as protective relay equipment, circuit breakers and monitoring systems. A battery system must be inspected and tested at regular intervals. A number of parameters are measured when a battery is inspected. These include ambient temperature, total voltage between terminal posts, charger output current, cell voltages, acid density, electrolyte temperature, electrolyte level, water consumption and resistance at connections.

Testing Circuit Breakers

When a fault occurs, current must be interrupted quickly and reliably to avoid personal injuries and minimize damage. The circuit breaker is the active link in the fault-clearance chain. During its 20-40 year service life, a circuit breaker must be constantly prepared to do its duty. Usually, a circuit breaker has to be taken out of service in order to fully test it, but online testing may also give indications of performance. The following parameters are often tested on a circuit breaker: closing time, opening time, resistance of the main contracts and synchronization of contact operation. Contact travel and speed are also tested, as are dynamic resistance and vibration testing.

CABA WIN	MOM 690
MOM600A	VIDAR
TM1600 / MA61	EGIL
MOM200A	B10E

Primary Injection Testing

ODEN AT	ODEN A
CSU600A / 600AT	TM200

For primary injection testing, high current is injected on the primary side of the current transformer. The entire chain - current transformer, conductors, connection points, relay protection and sometimes circuit breakers as well - is covered by the test. The system being tested must be taken out of service during primary injection testing, usually conducted in connection with commissioning.

Low voltage circuit breakers are used in distribution networks, in industry, ships, trains etc. Reliable operation of LV-breakers is in many cases very important, for example in nuclear power plants, subways and oil platforms. The only way to verify that a direct-acting low voltage circuit breaker operates properly is to inject a high current.

Diagnostic Test of Insulation

	The single largest cause of costly downtime in high voltage installations is ageing of and damage to insulation materials; however, premature replacements or premature large maintenance activities will result in financial waste. One problem has been the lack of appropriate field tools to diagnose insulation materials reliably and non-destructively. The diagnosis methods available have mostly been suitable only for laboratory conditions and difficult to apply in the field. Alternatively, they have not provided sufficient information to form a basis for further action. Other available methods have caused too much electric stress on the object under evaluation. Often, a combination of the above obstacles has resulted in a situation where none or few measurements have been done in the field after the object has been installed. Diagnostic System suitable for field use is therefore required:
	a) IDA 200
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