Módulos híbridos em subestações de alta tensão: uma análise sob o ponto de vista da manutenção e comparação com tecnologias convencionais

Abstract

In order to connect with regulatory guidelines and thus improve constantly intern procedures and service performance, electric energy companies develop maintenance planning on their facilities and retrofit them. When the quality or cost indicators remain critical, conventional equipment are replaced by new ones with new technologies. In such context, one of these new equipment is the high voltage hybrid module, which replaces conventional switching and protection equipment. This paper compares conventional equipment maintenance with hybrid modules maintenance, which were purchased by the companies to replace the first ones, highlighting involved costs. First, conceptual theory related to maintenance is discussed and then several maintenance activities and routines practiced by big electric energy companies are described. Finally, overall maintenance costs for the conventional equipment and for the hybrid modules are estimated considering an annual period. This comparison and the real life experience show that hybrid modules offer bigger impact in maintenance processes by requiring mainly more skilled labor, because of its multifunctionality and more complex structure, as well as the fact of belonging to a new technology, which is not completely well handled. On the other hand, this bigger maintenance costs do not imply that the substitution of the conventional equipment by the hybrid modules is not attractive or has no advantage. As the operation time passes, there will be more adaptation to the new technology processes and, therefore, significant decrease of maintenance requirement because of the hybrid modules constructive characteristics, which are very emphasized by manufacturers, just as greater reliability and security.