The July/August Issue of the Electrical Insulation Magazine has been released. Use the accordion headings below to explore this issue’s content, and visit the IEEE Xplore for full magazine access.
For a list of upcoming conferences, please visit the conference page or check out the events calendar.
Featured Articles
Featured Articles
A Day in the Life of an Oil Laboratory
Overhead Lines and Wildfires: Role of Outdoor Insulators: Prepared by a Task Force
of the IEEE DEIS Outdoor Insulation Technical Committee
Thermal Index Estimation of Thermally Upgraded Kraft Paper in Mineral Oil and
Natural Ester Insulating Liquids Under Accelerated Aging Conditions
Editorial
Greg Stone, Antonios Tzimas, and Peter Morshuis
Yoshimichi Ohki—The Longest Serving Contributor to IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine and Still Active!
In January 1988 Prof. Yoshi Ohki wrote his first “News from Japan” column. Since then he has contributed a column to every issue of the magazine over the past 34 years! It is rare for a volunteer to have such a sustained effect on a publication, and both the past editors in chief and the current IEEE DEIS executive want to acknowledge Yoshi’s amazing commitment to the magazine.
Yoshi was encouraged to write the “News from Japan” article by Prof. John Tanaka of the University of Connecticut. John was the person who pushed for the creation of IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine, when he was in various DEIS executive positions in the 1980s, leading to his presidency in 1986 and 1987. After John was president of the Society, he was asked by one of us to take on the volunteer role of magazine editor-in-chief. John did this with gusto and immediately decided that regular columns should be part of the magazine—one of which was the “News from Japan” column. In the first several years of the column, Prof. Ohki co-wrote this column with Prof. Sachio Yasufuku.
Prof. Ohki’s first column included information from a recent Symposium on Electrical Insulating Materials, which was sponsored by the Institute of Electrical Engineers in Japan (IEEJ). Arend van Roggen (a long-time editor in chief of the IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation), Keith Nelson, and the late Chat Cooke were invited speakers. His first report also discussed two new investigative committees of the IEEJ’s Electrical Insulation Materials: one to investigate the use of expert systems and the other on new insulation measurement methods. He also presented information from a recent seminar for young researchers working in our field. Since this was his first article, a photo of the young Prof. Ohki was in the article (shown below).
Since his first column, he has highlighted Japanese research and new products from Japanese companies, as well as reported on the significant outcomes of dozens of insulation-related conferences held in Japan. The breadth of the topics he has covered is amazing. A random sampling of old magazine issues shows reports on the following:
- The development of 12-kV thyristors (May 1990),
- Operation of the world’s first ±500- kV DC power cables (Jan. 1995),
- Opening of a 500-kV XLPE power cable plant (Sep. 1996),
- Insulating materials in cell phones (Nov. 1999),
- Cable fault location using GPS (Jan. 2001),
- High voltage circuit breakers (Nov. 2007),
- UHV transformer assembly technologies (Mar. 2010),
- 2-MW wind turbines (Jan. 2011), and
- Redox flow battery systems (Nov. 2014).
For most of this time Dr. Ohki was a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. He is now professor emeritus there and continues to be involved in large projects at Waseda. He is endlessly enthusiastic about insulating materials, aging, and measurement technology. He has published over 475 refereed papers, of which 368 are in English. He is also the author of 7 Japanese textbooks and 2 books in English. Prof. Ohki has been an IEEE Fellow since 2000 and has given many lectures and received many awards from DEIS conferences.
Yoshimichi Ohki around 1987
In volunteer roles he has been, among others, president of the Japanese Electrotechnical Committee for standards, vice president of the IEEJ, senior fellow of the Japanese Science and Technology Agency, and member of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. He has been a senior editor for the IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation, was chair of the 1991 IEEE DEIS ICPADM in Tokyo, and created the IEEJ and IEEE DEIS co-sponsored International Symposium on Electrical Insulating Materials (ISEIM), first held in Tokyo in 1995.
IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine has been proud that he has shared his time and leadership abilities with us. We hope that he will keep shedding light on the advances in Japanese research and development for many years to come.
Greg Stone, Antonios Tzimas, and Peter Morshuis, on behalf of the DEIS president and all emeritus editors in chief of IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine
From The Editor
Antonios Tzimas
Editor in Chief
In the past few months there has already been a couple of DEIS conferences in Europe and the United States, with the ICDL taking place in Seville, Spain, and combined EIC and IPMHVC taking place in Knoxville, Tennessee. In the following issues of the magazine, conference reporting will be back to find out more about in-person participation and perhaps feedback from online participation with the latest online presence tools. In the next issue, the magazine will be introducing distinguished DEIS members who will share their life experiences with a personal touch and perhaps limited insulation clearances!
This issue is launched with a special editorial that acknowledges Professor Yoshimichi Ohki, the longest serving contributor to IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine, contributing the column “News from Japan,” which in this issue introduces development of high voltage and high power for inverters in vehicles. There is also another Stories from China column on development and application of a UHV AC gas-insulated metal enclosed transmission line in a recent river-crossing power transmission project. Within the Bulletin Board section, details on the DEIS call for nominations for 2022 can be found for those interested in joining the DEIS Administrative Committee, and there is a call for two new editorial board members, if you would like to join this magazine’s team!
This issue of the magazine starts with an article about oil laboratories that is the first in a series about “a day in the life of a _____ laboratory.” Then, an article by the DEIS Outdoor Insulation Technical Committee discusses the role of outdoor insulators in wildfires. The third article introduces the estimation of the thermal index of thermally upgraded Kraft paper with different insulating liquids.
The first article in this issue, “A Day in the Life of an Oil Laboratory,” is authored by Melissa Carmine-Zajac, from Doble Engineering Company. In this article, the function and requirements an oil laboratory are introduced as the author describes the various oil testing techniques and processes followed. The author elaborates on the entire process from sampling to reporting, including specialized personnel skills required to perform administrative, technical, and management tasks that require advanced analytical equipment and testing techniques, software, and data analysis.
The second article, authored by R. A. Ghunem, A. H. El-Hag, M. Marzinotto, M. T. Nazir, K. L. Wong, and S. H. Jayaram, is titled “Overhead Lines and Wildfires: Role of Outdoor Insulators.” In this article the authors present a state-of-the-art review on outdoor insulators and their vulnerability to wildfire flash-over by understanding the root cause and relevant surface insulation properties. In addition, the wildfire effects on outdoor insulators are explored and relevant risk-mitigation techniques available to utilities are discussed. The authors then focus on the best practices that can be implemented by utilities located in areas with high wildfire risks depending on surface contamination and surrounding environment.
The third article is titled “Thermal Index Estimation of Thermally Upgraded Kraft Paper in Mineral Oil and Natural Ester Insulating Liquids Under Accelerated Aging Conditions,” authored by Ed Casserly, Juan Acosta, and Andy Holden from Ergon Refining Inc. and Brad Greaves and Tom Prevost from Weidmann Electrical Technology Inc. from the United States. The focus of this article is on an experimental comparison of the thermal aging of thermally upgraded Kraft paper under a series of five mineral insulating liquids and two natural esters using IEEE Standard C57.100 Annex A.4.2 compared with the values in IEEE Standard C57.91. The article introduces the results obtained from the two standards and discusses their discrepancies as well as parameters responsible for the discrepancies. The authors introduce the testing procedures followed and the tensile data obtained. The authors then discuss the interpretation of the results and present the thermal index calculations.
News from Japan
Stories from China
Book Reviews
John J. Shea
Fault Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Reliability for Electrical Machines and Drives
E. G. Strangas, G. Clerc, H. Razik, and A. Soualhi
John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030 http://www.wiley.com
ISBN 978-1-119-72275-5
442 pp., $150 (Hardcover), 2022
With the expected proliferation of sensors in power electronics and power distribution systems, especially in electric vehicles (EVs), the need for predictive diagnostics and fault diagnosis is expected to help maintain and increase the reliability of future electrical machines and drives.
This book focuses on methods that can be used for predictive-based diagnostics for mechanical actuators, motion systems, generators, controls, and electric motors, among other devices. Historically, these devices have relied on condition-based monitoring maintenance (CBM) to ensure minimal interruption of service and people safety, process, and equipment up-time. Rather than simply indicating a failed component, today, the trend is for replacing traditional CBM methods with sensors and systems that enable incipient faults and provide diagnostics. This requires monitoring real-time system operating conditions, typically involving a central monitoring system with sensors possibly installed on components, filters, and processing systems used to measure and analyze sensor data without adding excessive system cost.
This book contains three chapters with a focus on monitoring electro-mechanical actuators, motors, and drive systems. The first chapter covers the components typically used for predictive health monitoring and prognosis of failures. This entails concise descriptions of various sensors and sensing methods for current, temperature vibration, and voltage. Signal analysis, conditioning, and filtering methods are described along with an extensive list of various methods used to classify faults and pending faults for various types of electrical machines and drive components.
Chapter two provides concise but critical information on the differences among the various types of components used in electrical drives from the supply to the electrical actuator or motor, including static switches, capacitors, asynchronous and synchronous motors, focusing on physics and different failure characteristics of these components. This provides very insightful information that is essential for developing the proper monitoring system depending on the types of loads being monitored. This is very useful information, since it also illustrates the performance differences among various types of capacitors, for example.
The final chapter applies the information from the first two chapters to illustrate how systems can be built to improve the reliability of electrical machine-based systems by showing how failure prognosis and decision-based systems enhance reliability. Some of the topics cover lifetime and reliability prediction methods, failure patterns, and fault management and mitigation.
This would be a very interesting book for researchers and students working in electrical machines and drives technologies. This information provided in this book is a concise collection of methods that can be used to create predictive diagnostics systems. It provides many ideas to allow the reader to compare various methods in use today and gives insight into the issues and challenges faced when developing monitoring systems.
Electrical Safety Engineering of Renewable Energy Systems
R. Araneo and M. Mitolo
John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030 http://www.wiley.com
ISBN 978-1-119-62498-1
299 pp., $135 (Hardcover), 2022
Renewable energy systems generally consist of various combinations of photovoltaic (PV), wind turbine, batteries, or other energy-storage devices. Connecting these components together to form a microgrid or provide emergency backup power or integrating into the existing power grid can pose many safety complications that may not have been a factor in a conventional-grid-only system. Renewables are also becoming increasingly prevalent in modern electrical systems. Safety measures are necessary to ensure proper installation practices are followed for people and property protection.
This book serves as a reference for designing and developing electrical systems connected to renewable energy sources with a focus on safety, more specifically, shock and fire safety. The book begins by reviewing fundamental concepts of electrical safety engineering, including a review of electric shock for both AC and DC. This covers ventricular fibrillation (VF), human body impedance, heart factor, and various shock time-current curves for both AC and DC. Ground potential and touch voltages are also reviewed.
The remainder of the book focuses on a safety-by-design approach to AC/DC systems. This entails methods for detecting ground faults in various system topologies, ground and bonding methods, and lightning protection systems. Ways to minimize ground faults by design are illustrated along with monitoring methods and the equipment necessary to ensure electric shock and fire safety for a system.
Topologies for power collection are given for PV and wind-based systems including offshore wind farms and battery energy-storage systems for electric vehicles (EVs). Soil resistivity and ground resistance measurements are also covered. Various measurement methods are described and methods for reducing resistivity are provided. Two appendices also have details on the performance of grounding systems under transient conditions and cable failures—both very important topics for ensuring reliable and safe power systems.
This book would be of great interest to power system engineers designing with renewables. Although it does not provide specific National Electrical Code (NEC) information, it does provide a general understanding for safe practices for integrating renewables and making the reader aware of the potential safety implications when designing a power system with renewables that may not have been considered in a conventional power system.
Hybrid Technologies for Power Generation
M. Faro, O. Barbera, and G. Giacoppo, Editors
Academic Press
Elsevier
50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor Cambridge, MA 02139 http://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals
ISBN 978-0-12-823793-9
525 pp., $200 (Softcover), 2022
In recent years, the electric grid has and continues to undergo many changes. The traditional centralized one-way power flow model is being changed by the introduction of renewable energy resources coupled with advances in power electronics and energy-storage devices and methods to replace traditional fossil fuel-based sources. Not only has the existing grid seen an increasing number of wind and solar power energy sources integrated and supplying power, but the creation of grid-connected as well as islanding microgrids has also seen increasing deployments. There are many attractive benefits for using renewable energy sources: creating islanded grid-independent loads, two-way power flow, dispatchable energy, and resilience, among many of the other advantages. These benefits generally do come with a high price tag for the capital, and there are no standard designs currently in place to reduce engineering costs and speed installations. In addition, the many different applications and requirements force one-off designs that are not cost-effective, coupled with a wide range of regulations, varying policies, lagging standards, and debates over what are the best designs still need to be worked out.
This book looks at the many possible power system architecture solutions. These include incorporating novel technologies including fuel cells, thermal energy storage, batteries, and electrolysers coupled into the grid along with wind and solar resources. Guidelines are given for selecting the most appropriate design to meet the end user’s energy demands. The book covers multisource power distribution designs with various control schemes. Reviews on various commercially available software, used to design and cost these systems, is reviewed along with protocols for analysis, operation, and large-scale production.
The book is divided into two main parts: stationary-based systems and vehicle-based systems. The stationary systems cover motivation, policies, technical challenges, design, performance, control strategies, optimization, and modeling for grid-connected, grid-connected but islandable, and fully off-grid power systems.
The vehicle part provides the motivations, environmental aspects, policies, technical challenges in general, and design and case studies for automotive electric vehicles (EVs), heavy-duty transportation, aeronautic, marine, and unmanned aerials. A life-cycle assessment of passenger EVs is also presented.
This book would be useful for engineers who want to learn about the many different choices currently being considered for power system architectures of the future. It provides many current design methodologies along with insight and an overview of the challenges but does not delve into many of the fine technical details, regulations, or policies governing power distribution systems.
Introduction to the Analysis of Electromechanical Systems
P. C. Krause, O. Wasynczuk, and T. O’Connell
IEEE Press
445 Hoes Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08854
Distributed by:
John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030 http://www.wiley.com
ISBN 978-1-119-82999-7
249 pp., $134.95 (Hardcover), 2022
This book can be used for an undergraduate or introductory course on motors and drives. It covers the fundamental theory of various types of electric motors including DC, brushless DC, permanent magnet AC, and induction machines. The voltage–torque relationship is introduced, along with phasors and steady-state equivalent circuits, which allows the reader to take away an understanding of the fundamentals. The power electronics section includes switching fundamentals, buck, boost circuits, and other basic power conversion circuits. Electric drives used to control these motors are described along with some of the basics of power engineering including wye-wye, delta-delta, and combinations of wye-delta circuits, reactive power, per unit, three-phase faults, and synchronous generators.
This book could be used as an introductory text in a power engineering curriculum because it provides the fundamentals of many key concepts in power engineering and provides problems at the end of each chapter.
Solid State Physics—A Primer
L. Colombo
IOP Publishing Ltd.
Temple Circus, Temple Way
Bristol, BS1 6HG, UK
Phone: +44 (0)117 929 7481
USA Office:
190 North Independence Mall West, Suite 601
Philadelphia, PA 19106 Phone: +01 215 627 0880 http://store.ioppublishing.org ISBN 978-0-7503-2262-1 $120 (hardback), 2021
Solid-state physics studies how the large-scale properties of solid materials originate from their atomic-scale properties. Solid-state physics forms a theoretical basis for materials science. It has direct applications, for example, in the technology of semiconductors.
Solid materials are formed from densely packed atoms, which interact intensely. These interactions produce the physio-chemical properties—mechanical (e.g., hardness and elasticity), thermal, electrical, magnetic, and optical—of solids. Depending on the material involved and the conditions in which it was formed, the atoms may be arranged in a regular, geometric pattern, as crystalline solids or irregularly, or as amorphous solids. Most solid-state physics theory focuses on crystal structures. Primarily because of the periodicity of atoms in a crystal, its defining characteristic facilitates mathematical modeling. Also, crystalline materials often have electrical, magnetic, optical, or mechanical properties that can be useful for engineering purposes.
This book provides an excellent, tutorial style and introduction to the theory of solid-state physics, focusing predominantly on the physics of phonons and electrons in crystals. It is organized into three parts. The first part covers the fundamentals of crystalline solids and concepts needed to understand subsequent parts of the book. Part one flows into part two, which introduces the concepts of vibration, thermal, and elastic properties. Vibration modes, dispersion, and phonon theory based on a gas of pseudo-particles are covered. The third part describes electronic structure of solids. It contains theory on electron structure in crystals and the Fermi-Dirac statistics, Bloch theorem, and Kronig-Penney model for introducing the band structure for electrons.
This book is for someone wanting to learn the basics of crystalline solid-state theory and would be a good book to accompany an undergraduate course in solid-state physics. While clearly explaining key concepts by providing many figures and drawings to help explain concepts, it also includes appendices that are loaded with concise explanations of key concepts that are needed to understand the fundamentals being presented in the book. This writing style will provide the reader with a solid foundation in solid-state physics.
Optical Radiation and Matter
R. J. Brecha and J. M. O’Hare IOP Publishing Ltd.
Temple Circus, Temple Way Bristol, BS1 6HG, UK
Phone: +44 (0)117 929 7481
USA Office:
190 North Independence Mall West, Suite 601
Philadelphia, PA 19106 Phone: +01 215 627 0880 http://store.ioppublishing.org ISBN 978-0-7503-2624-7 144 pp., $95 (eBook), 2021
Optical sensors and sources are be- ing used in many applications: heart-rate monitors, breath analysis, liquid level sensors, biometric sensors for security, laser ranging, and many other examples. This book is intended to provide the reader with the fundamental theory of optical radiation that would give the reader an understanding of the physics behind optical device applications. The book begins with an introduction of the basics of electricity and magnetism using Maxwell’s equations and the propagation of electromagnetic radiation in free space. The essential concepts, used in many optical applications, of polarization, scattering, reflection, and refraction are then discussed. The theory of the interaction of light with solid materials is reviewed in general, with more specific topics on the electro-optic and acousto-optic effects reviewed in detail. Optical spectroscopy of molecular gases is also covered.
The target audience of this book is students studying electromagnetics or condensed matter physics. The book has questions at the end of each chapter for further studies or homework and references at the end of each chapter for further study. Anyone interested in the theory of optical radiation and condensed matter physics would be interested in this book.
Harmonic Modeling of Voltage Source Converters Using Basic Numerical Methods
R. Lian, R. Subroto, V. Andrean, and B. Lin
John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030 http://www.wiley.com
ISBN 978-1-119-52713-8
412 pp., $145 (Hardcover), 2022
With the rapid growth of voltage source converters (VSCs) in power systems, it is useful to create models of VSCs to study their behavior and influence in power systems. This book provides a theoretical analysis for modeling harmonics produced by VSCs. It provides the fundamental theory of VSCs and reviews basic numerical modeling techniques used to model VSCs.
Various types of VSCs are modeled along with general control strategies used to implement the converters. The state space equations are derived for various types of converters with a model to predict the AC current and DC voltage harmonics for small input signal changes. A new harmonic model is also introduced that uses a neural network model to form a highly accurate parameter estimator of a VSC.
This book would benefit electrical engineering students studying power electronics and help them learn more about VSCs, or engineers interested in learning how harmonics, produced by VSCs, can affect power system stability. Numerical program code is included to show how the numerical techniques presented are applied to VSC modeling.
