The Sixth Day

Monday morning is the time when all the TNBR employees including the top management gather in a classy auditorium for the morning assembly. I was honored to be there this morning to witness this event with my very eyes. I purposely escaped last week's assembly fearing the thought of introducing myself in front of the whole company and today, it turns out that nobody even noticed about our presence, which is cool, heh. Then again, there are still 10 Mondays left and 1 of them could be the day when my worst nightmare comes true.

The assembly was simple and fun. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I did enjoy it. You have to be there to experience the moment, it just can't be described by words. Oh really? Just say that you are lazy to write! Sshhh.. not too loud. Okay, you are right this time. Next Monday maybe! Hoho.

So today, I helped the senior technician with his research data by using Excel. The data needs to be represented by graphs and from there, further analysis would be done. The place where I worked:

The research is about IPC, which stands for Insulated Piercing Connector. What does it do!?? It joins cables together, as simple as that. They are creating a standard or module for IPC testing, which doesn't exist yet. More on this IPC later! An example of IPC and it's cross section:

The rest of the day is spent by helping the officemates preparing for the 5S inspection. Yeah, they are still working on it. Also, bonus pic of the day:

3 different sizes of trash can in 1 spot!

This takes awesomeness to a whole new level

The Visit #1

I'm not sure if there is going to be #2, #3, but hey, there is always hope. Thanks to the 2 servings of Nescafe ice from kedai nasi ayam UPTEN, I managed to stay awake throughout the whole ordeal. Oh really? You were yawning all the time! Dude, it's not something that I can control. At least I was acting sane.. Whatever. So anyway, we departed to KL around 10 pm with the vehicle of the technical assistant on duty. I thought I could ride with the technicians but the van doesn't have any seatings at the back, only equipments. Our destination is the PPU (Pencawang Pembahagian Utama) in Bangsar and the cable testing there need to be done during the night since the load is not as heavy thus switching can be done without causing power disruption. PPU? What's that? Refer to the picture below:

As you can see, the PPU is where electricity is received from PMU, changed to 33kV and 11 kV and then sent to the distribution station to be distributed to your house. We arrived about 30 minutes later and the staffs there were already waiting for us.

The cable that is going to be tested is the 33kV cable that is connecting the PPU to the distribution station. The tests are Partial Discharge (PD) test and Insulation Resistance (IR) test. Basically, the tests determine the condition of the cable and it's joints. With this information, early actions can be taken instead of fixing it when it breaks down, which may cause bigger problems. This tests are done on the switchgear, where cables involved have been de-energized.

Switchgear under operation

Inside the switchgear. The 3 red holes are

where connections are made for the tests.

The back of the van. Cables extensions for testing purpose.

The red barrel is a power supply, able to produce up to 40 kV.

The place where the tests are being monitored,

located at the middle part of the van. Air-conditioned!

The tests took about 3 hours and according to the technicians, it usually takes much longer than that. How fortunate. This was something new to me, I never knew about this before and new things are always interesting. I arrived home at 2 am. Remember the Nescafe ice? That made me unable to sleep for the rest of the morning. Go me! >_>

The Fifth Day

5S. In other words, time for gotong-royong! That is what I did for the whole day today, helping the staffs to improve the condition of their workplace. That includes labeling, making lines on the floor, arranging items, throwing out things and filling up the walls with posters. The auditing people will be coming next Tuesday and since they didn't do really well in the last inspection, they are really working hard to make up for that. It was great to do non technical things once in a while. Besides, I got to know more about the staffs there. Improvements worth mentioning:

The files section. I wish I have the "before" version to compare..

Cables exhibition. Arrangements done by yours truly

Actually, the day hasn't ended yet. I'm going to follow the technicians to KL tonight to check the cables there and and this will last until dawn. I'm not sure if I will be able to stay awake so ugh, be right back, caffeine hunting..

The Fourth Day

This is the view of TNBR from my usual parking spot. This view motivates me to work hard every morning and to come again on the next day. Yes, don't laugh. Today, the very cozy meeting room has been hijacked by someone known as The Mentor so I had to settle myself on the sofa in the waiting area. The Mentor comes once a week to provide mentoring to those who are in needs. Who wouldn't want to meet him, right? He told me to use this 3 months wisely and make use of the gained knowledge in my future studies and career. Thank you The Mentor. No picture of him, sorry.

A while after that, I attended a meeting led by Mr Bob, the technical expert discussing on whether to buy this cable measuring equipments from a company that sent 2 representatives there. Honestly, I have no idea what they were talking about but I can conclude that if the price of the equipments is cheap, TNB would gladly buy them. Again, no picture.

Then I attended another meeting that discussed on a new research project that is going to be presented to the big guns next week. It is about cables, of course. The project is expected to be completed in 3 years and is going to cost millions! I never knew research projects can be this scary. The Colleague will be directly involved with this project, good luck!

Other than that, the time is spent by reading The Manual. It's more like browsing now, heh. Wait! What? There is only 1 picture! Ugh okay, I'll just put a picture that I took yesterday.

That is one of the technicians there, doing a torque test on a cable connector. He is so agile, hence the blurry image, hoho. Okay now, go away. Nooooooooooooo!!!

The Third Day

Today I learned more about the picture that I posted in the last entry. The cables there are the one that you always see connected along the electric poles or "tiang letrik". There are five cables with the same sizes connected together with IPCs in a closed loop. Wait what? then how the current goes in? Good question. Noticed the big black box in that previous post? It's a transformer. The EMF in the windings generates current flow in the loop, refer to Faraday's Law. Of course, there are always resistances. A simple diagram on how it works:

Heat sensors are then attached to a point on each cable to measure their temperatures. The readings are displayed in a data logger where the technicians will record the readings for every 30 minutes. This is where the technicians have to be 24/7:

The white box is the data logger displaying the temperatures, the pen and datasheets for recording purpose, the multimeter to make sure of the current value, and many more, heh. The transformer is powered by this ugh, I forgot the name:

What are they doing here is basically creating an accelerated aging process to the cable connectors by stressing and unstressing them with high current every 30 minutes to test for their endurance. Each connectors will undergo at most 200 hours of this or until it fails. From the datas, the researchers study on what to do to make the cables last longer. This test is actually just a part of 5 tests in this particular research. More on them in the next posts.

The Second Day

It seems like the time is running so slow today since there is no work to be done and I'm just waiting for the time to leave. The supervisor is busy for the whole day and most of the technicians suddenly disappeared. However, a manual on underground cable maintenance was given yesterday and that is what I was doing for the whole day, reading the manual while resisting the urge to sleep. If The Colleague wasn't there, I would have fell asleep in that very cozy meeting room, heh. Behold, the manual:

The manual basically explains about the technical details on cable maintenance and how the procedures should be done. After reading it for I-forgot-how-many times, I paid a visit to a nearby room that contains a setup of cables that is currently being researched. The test is known as The Heat Cycle test and the technicians need to record the temperature reading of the cables every 30 minutes for 24/7 until the connectors failed. More about this later, since I'm afraid that there is nothing to blog about tomorrow. Oh right before I go, the cables setup:

The First Day

This post is very sudden and I will make a proper introduction of this blog later, hopefully. Today was my first day in TNBR. There are 2 other trainees from UNITEN, Ms Faten and Mr Shah. 1 is assigned to the transmission department and 1 to the distribution department, myself included. The supervisor is Dr Basri, whose research field is on cables and that is what I will be doing in the next 3 months.

As you can see above, I was placed in the High Voltage Diagnostic Laboratory. It is a big room consisting of several rooms for researchers, an area of cubicles, and several cable testing rooms. I learned quite a few, lot of things actually about conductors, insulators, and how the informations measured from cables can help us in determining the problem of the cable. Wait what? cables?

Those are cables. A variation of cables that is used or being used in our country. I will tell you about the cables in later posts.