Mining | Investigation of High Risk Level Electrical Defects

Client Background

Our client operates a platinum mine in South Africa’s Limpopo province, covering 137km2. The present infrastructure comprises of five open pits. The mining method is truck-and-shovel, and current operating pit depths vary from 45m to 245m. Ore is milled at the on-mine North and South concentrators. In 2019, production of ore made them one of the largest platinum mines within Southern Africa.

As a reliable plant was a requirement, a condition-based maintenance tactic was adopted.

Martec was appointed to provide CM solutions for the medium voltage electrical assets at the concentrator plant that will ensure improved reliability and availability as well as compliance to insurance policies.

Key Challenges

Premature failure of Switchgear
The electrical network is of significant importance in driving production. The condition of the network, especially the switchgear, was not sufficiently assessed for risk of failure, meaning
that the electrical network posed a major risk.

Not only is a failure expensive to repair, but it also leads to unwanted and costly downtime (sometimes taking up to 3 – 5 days to repair), resulting in massive production losses.

Due to safety risks it was difficult to identify the suspected defective switchgear while the plant was in operation.

Martec opted to use online partial discharge technology, specifically signal analysis, to locate the source of discharges that compromised the reliability of this switchgear.