The Nineteenth Day

Please disregard my previous post under the same title. My extreme laziness suddenly kicks in and made me unable to make a proper post. This will happen a lot more in the future so get used to it, heh.

The logbook that is required to record the data for the cable testing is out of pages and new logbooks need to be made so I went with one of the technician to the stationary room located in the managing department. It is just a small room but has enough equipments and stationeries to fulfill office related tasks.

There is a huge photocopy machine, which always have people using it, a binding machine, a rack of colourful papers, binding combs of different sizes, and other things that I am unfamiliar with. For the first time in my life, I finally got to use a photocopy machine and a binding machine. How sad. I know, *sniff*. We went back to The Lab with 3 new sets of freshly made logbooks.

The binding machine, and other stuffs

The Eighteenth Day

The Team of cable diagnostics, besides doing researches on issues regarding cables, also provide cable testing services to clients all over the country. The partial discharge test which I've mentioned recently is also included.

This tests are complying to the maintenance strategy known as Condition Based Maintenance (CBM). Heard of prevention is better than cure? It works just like that. According to the test results, the cables which have the potential to fail will be replaced immediately or will be tested again in the near future. Even though this requires more time and effort, it has been proven that this strategy is more economical.

At the moment, I'm learning how to translate the raw data acquired from the tests to informations that will tell about the condition of the cable. I might save you from the upcoming blackouts, who knows heh. Let see what The Intern is up to..

Pekerja Terbaik April 2010

You wish!

The Seventeenth Day

The Lab is not as lively as usual since most of the members were out due to work related matters. Initially, I was planning to loaf around since there is no one to supervise me but hey, everyone else is working hard so I should too.

Wish granted. I was occupied for the whole day, thanks to The Team. The first half is spent by keying in cable test results into the company's operation database and the other half is by following The Team to do Partial Discharge test on 2 cables in Cyberjaya. Yeah, the test is similar to this, but this time I got to use the testing equipments by myself.

As an engineer, it's not just about knowing how to do the procedures, you also have to know why the procedures are done that way. That was what I did, asking questions after questions. It's a good thing that The Team is being really helpful. Remind me to bring some pulut kuning next time, heh.

The Visit #2

Something to ponder on: Studying is about gaining knowledge and work is about gaining wealth. Knowledge will always be helpful and work should be something that you enjoy doing, doesn't need to be related on what you have studied.

End of post.

The Sixteenth Day

The Monday Buzz is here again. I would like to point out something interesting, for me at least, that happened in the hall this morning. In the assembly, selected staffs will come out on the stage and share anything that they want, from "cupcake baking" to "how to stop smoking". Anything. This time, it is about effective breastfeeding. I don't think there is anything wrong with that but the speaker is a guy and most of the audience are guys as well, maybe a more appropriate topic can be chosen instead. There are even actual pictures of the subject on the screen. Giggles can be heard everywhere.

Surprisingly, as soon as the slides ended, the speaker revealed that it is just the introduction of his talk. I didn't see that coming, I'm sure the others as well. No, you must be the only one. Shh.. don't ruin that part. Anyway, the talk is actually about leadership. As a leader, there will be a time that you need to talk to your followers about something uncomfortable, not only to yourself but your followers as well, but it has to be done either way. So, what do you do? You have to be well prepared, be comfortable with your subject, and deliver it in a way that it makes your audience comfortable as well. How? I leave that for you to think about, heh. The speaker showed a very good example on that thus giving me something to write about. Excellent mister!

The entrance to the hall

The Fifteenth Day

At the moment, I was assigned to complete a technical report on Pilot Cable fault location. All the data required is already there so what I need to do is to arrange the data nicely and add nice sentences where necessary, heh.

Pilot cable is a communication cable, put in parallel with voltage cable which will operate relays at both end when the voltage cable is faulty to prevent overcurrent. More on this later. The Cable Unit is researching for the correct methods in locating and repairing faults in pilot cable, which will be then used by TNB. The pilot cable that we have in The Lab:

The Big Picture

The cables inside, refer to the red arrow above

The Fourteenth Day

Hmm no, this is not the continuation from yesterday. That has to wait, heh. I actually want to write about pilot cables but since I don't have any self taken pictures of the subject, this has to wait as well. So what now? Hold on, let me check my pictures folder. Okay here:

The other path to The Lab

Yup, this is the hallway to the lab from the other end. There's is something interesting on my right where I was standing to take this photo and guess what, that's got to wait as well! Haha. Until then, later! *runs* What! that is all?

The Thirteenth Day

One of the staffs lost a family member this morning and The Lab members paid a visit to her family's house during lunch break. May Allah grant him a place in Jannah, amin. Let us be reminded that our turn will definitely come so let's make sure that we are well prepared.

One of the most important properties in electrical studies is resistance. It is a measure of opposition to the passage of a steady electric current. Resistance can be calculated using the Ohm's Law, V = IR and is measured in Ohms, taken from the name of the founder, Mr Georg Simon Ohm.

Georg Simon Ohm

(1789-1854)

Thank you Mr Ohm for the great discovery, because of you I got to study what I'm studying now, seriously. To be continued..

The Twelfth Day

Being an engineer is not all about doing reports, researches, and technical stuffs. You do other things as well. Bad introduction. I knew you are going to say that because I kind of agree, sadly. Anyway today, I was given the opportunity to write a tender about purchasing a new microscope for The Lab. Actually, the tender is almost complete. All I need to do is to add things that I think necessary and do some editing here and there. So you did almost nothing? Hey! at least I learned something.

The challenge is that in a tender, you cannot state the brand or model that you want but instead you have to specify the specifications of the microscope and this requires knowledge on the subject which I don't have any, heh. So I spent quite a while reading about microscopes, their functions, and their usages. Hopefully I'm still there when the new microscope arrives.

Microscope brochures to be read

The Eleventh Day

Let me start with the morning assembly, locally known as The Monday Buzz. It began with a doa, followed by a short upper body exercise, then a pledge reading ceremony by the employees. It was the management turn this time. After that there's a talk on the green technology unit, tips on e-mail tracking, and a video about fuel cell technology, which is 3 times more efficient than a conventional gasoline engine. At least that is what I managed to remember. The assembly ended with everyone singing "the song of the day", which is this song. I chose that because it has the highest views among other videos with the same title, heh.

Wow, that's quite a lot. I should do this every Monday! I still haven't received my specific assignment yet so until then, I won't be writing about my daily activities since it's just the same as the previous days. Now I present you, a random picture of TNBR to end my post.

The path to The Lab

The Tenth Day

The tenth day. A new entry with just an hour gap? Well, I'd feel bad if I didn't do an update for all the days that I came to work. The day is Friday, and Friday seems to end sooner than any other workdays, heh. So what? Give me a break. I'm out of ideas, and pictures as well. Wait, there's still one:

The Very Cosy Meeting Room

This is where the cable team have their meetings and discussions. The meetings are usually small, you can tell from the number of chairs there.

Hmmm. Nothing much happened on this day, other than helping the team with their research data and going around The Lab looking for things to be looked at. Several staffs just came back from outstation, and several others will be outstation-ed next week. It is a common thing in The Lab. There's always people that went outstation, which also means that there's always unoccupied seats for me, yay! A picture to end this post:

TNBD and TNBR working together

The Ninth Day

You missed the updates for the last 2 days! What!? you can start a thread now??! I can do whatever you can do. Okay, this is going to be.. troublesome. Anyway, that is what weekends are for! To do things that you aren't able to do on the weekdays! Nonsense. Whatever. Note to self: Do not baring2 kejap before updating the blog. Back to cables. Remember XLPE cable from the last entry? This is how it looks like:

The white thing surrounding the copper conductor is the XLPE material. Why XLPE is more preferable? It has high electrical and mechanical strength, high aging resistance, environmental stress resistance, anti-chemical corrosion, easy to be constructed, and can withstand higher temperature. XLPE is so cool! I know, right.

But then again, XLPE cable are also prone to failures. 2 types of common failures are partial discharge which I have briefly covered and water tree. A tree made from water? Wrong. It is a diffuse structure in the XLPE resembling the shape of a tree and is formed and grow in the presence of moisture, impurities, and electric field over time. In The Lab, this is how they investigate water trees in cables:

The XLPE insulator is first separated from the cable and put into the green machine to be sliced. The sliced XLPE will be put in a water bath at a certain temperature, together with a colouring substance to make the water tree more visible, if there's any. Credit goes to The Colleague for the information. After that, it will be cut into pieces before being observed by using a microscope.

Observation in action!

The picture in the red box above is taken from somewhere without permission. Hahaha. Not funny. It shows 2 types of water tree. Water tree is fatal because once they are big enough, they will bridge the insulation system, causing the cable to fail as shown by 'leakage tree'. The pictures in this entry is actually taken on The Eighth Day but since there's nothing eventful that happened in this day, I just need to put something, heh.

Moving on to the tenth day!

The Eighth Day

Before I proceed with today's event, let me share something about cable insulations. Insulators are materials that do not conduct electricity or resist current flow and can be in a form of solid, liquid, or gas. Insulators protect you from the danger of high voltage and the conductor from environmental factors. In Malaysia, modern high-voltage cables have XLPE insulators, which stands for Cross-Linked Polyethylene but there are still cables with oil insulators.

So today, I followed the technicians to take oil samples from this oil-filled cables. The samples are then sent to the lab to be analyzed for moisture content, dissolved gases, and impurities. This information will tell us about the condition of the cable and also the insulator itself. The process of the oil sampling will be summarized in the pictures below.

The oil tanks that provide continuous flow of oil

to the cables

The tube that connects the cable to the tank is bypassed

Sample taking in action!

The oil used is mineral oil or liquid petroleum. As you can see, it is colourless. An amazing application of the oil that I found, not related to cables unfortunately. Computer enthusiasts, this might interest you:

No cooling fans = less power consumption + no sound + no dusk.

Awesome? Definitely.

The Seventh Day

Seventh is such a cool word. Try repeating it many times. Seventh, seventh, seventh, seventh. Loudly this time! Seventh, seventh, seventh, seventh. It is so beautiful that it sounds like music to my ears. Dude, you're crazy. Excuse me, did anyoneone say something? Grrr... Oh well, let's proceed.

Finally, the 5S inspection day! The auditors were saying positive words for the big improvements that they made to the lab and I think they are going to get great marks this time. The results will be announced in the next morning assembly. Let's hope for the best! go go cable group! The 5S corner:

Also today, a group of people from Kenya paid a visit to the place or the cable lab, which will be called The Lab from now on. The Boss is explaining to them about the projects there and the cable samples on the table. They barely looked at my direction so I only managed to get this kind of picture.

What did I do? I helped one of the technical assistant to do a powerpoint report on the PD and IR tests that the cable group did last week in the KL area, refer to The Visit #1 for more information. The data obtained from the tests is processed by using this special software and this makes the life of the cable people much easier. This report is very important to the client, TNBD which will determine that which cables need to be replaced immediately, need to be rechecked in the near future, or do not require any major concern. It seems like I keep changing places everyday. My workstation for today:

Tomorrow? who knows. Later!

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.