Alessio Bresciani

5.45 AM

Alarm goes off. Breakfast, shower, coffee-to-go & hop in the car to drive to site. Today we are commissioning a refurbished 330MVA transformer!

6.45 AM

Arrive on site. Catch-up with my colleague and we perform our pre-start safety meeting and risk assessments for the job at hand. We will be using an injection trailer to inject current onto the primary transformer circuits to ensure the transformer protection will operate as intended.

7.30 AM

I have been tasked to perform some theoretical calculations to confirm the injection trailer voltage level that we should apply. It needs to be high enough so that we can measure the current values, but not so high so it exceeds the injection trailer fuse rating. I have set-up an excel application to perform these calculations so this will be the time to test it out!

9.00 AM

With my calculations finalised it’s time for smoko. I dash out to my favourite barista right next door to the substation for my second hit of caffeine for the morning.

9.15 AM

It’s time to set-up the injection trailer. We go over our risk assessment, schematics and isolation schedule to triple check that everything is de-energised and refresh ourselves of our working environment. We then start connecting the injection trailer to the primary plant and checking all the secondary connections.

12.00 PM

With the exhausting work of setting up the primary connections in the heat completed it’s now lunch time.

12.30 PM

After reassessing our risk assessment, it’s time to turn on the injection trailer and measure the through-currents on the protection panels.

We repeat these tests multiple times with different line arrangements.

2.00 PM

With all tests completed successfully we are confident that the transformer protection is operating as expected – I am also very happy with how my calculations compared to the measured results! It is time to pack up the equipment outside.

3.00 PM

Knock off time! I am swinging by the gym on my way home, before winding down for the evening.