The Thirty-Fourth Day

Unfortunately, there is nothing significant to be written today so I'll just leave a random picture from my TNBR folder for you to ponder about, heh.

Rubbish House

The Thirty-Third Day

I am scheduled to go to TNB Ipoh next week (24-27 May) for the pilot cable fault detection and today, I helped my co-supervisor which will be the leader of the trip to prepare the required documents and equipments.

Several forms to record data were printed and we set aside the equipments and tools that we are going to bring there such TDR, IR tester, and multimeter. Early preparations are the way to go. You never know..

Our very own TDR

The Thirty-Second Day

If you have been reading my posts, you would have some idea about the project that I'm currently involved in which is the "Pilot Cable Fault Detection". The equipment used to detect the fault is known as a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR). This equipment injects a waveform inside the cable and the waveform will be reflected back to the equipment, processed and then displayed. From the reflected waveform, the type of fault can be determined. This is an example of how the displayed waveform looks like:

The large jump at the end indicates the end of the cable while the small jumps in between can be joints and faults. There is this equipment vendor that would like to sell their TDR to the Cable Unit and they are offering a demonstration on the new TDR. I, together with my supervisor and co-supervisor went to PMU KLIA to attend the demonstration that is going to be done on a pilot cable there.

This is where the electricity of KLIA originates

Demonstration being done

Overall, my supervisor which is the head of The Team is quite fond with the new TDR and is now considering on getting one. Too bad I won't be around when the new TDR arrives, heh.

The Thirty-First Day

This is what I have dug up from today's Monday Buzz. As an employer, you don't just come to your workplace everyday, doing the work that you are asked to do, received your salary at the end of the month, and then repeat the same thing over and over again. There will be no meaning to your life and you are no different than a robot.

So how do you make it more meaningful? One of the top executives of the company has suggested that first you have to believe in yourself and your ability. Then you will begin to change to be a better employee. After that, you will feel belonged to the company once you realize the meaning of coming to work then you will become a better person. This can be simplified in 4 words which are:

Yes, the most important thing is believing in yourself. This reminds me of the famous quote of Naruto.. Dattebayo! (believe it!)

The Thirtieth Day

The picture above shows the logbooks used to record the data for the partial discharge test that has been done from 2007 until now. O.W.T.S. stands for Oscillating Wave Test System, an alternative method of partial discharge test which has been brought to Malaysia by The Team, something that they are really proud of and a big contribution to the TNB distribution system. 1 logbook contains about 30 cables and multiply it by 35, The Team has already tested more than 1000 cables. Very impressive.

So, what about it? I need to rearrange the softcopy of the data to a new format that will be used as a standard format for all the partial discharge test team in the country. By doing that, I also need to look for the pattern of partial discharge occurance in cable sby their location, type, length, age, and etc. This will be my regular activity until stated otherwise..
-tgh gile mass effect 2

The Twenty-Ninth Day

One of the test equipment in The Lab can measure the overall capacitance of a cable. If we know the capacitance specification of the cable which is in uF/km, the length of the cable can be calculated. The problem is that the information is not available since the value of capacitance/km differs for each cable and depends on sizes, types of insulation, and manufacturers. Nobody would still keep the cable datasheet I believe.

To estimate the value, I was given the task to find the average of the value based on the length and the total capacitance data taken from past samples. The values then will be classified based on the criteria stated above. The average of the value will be useful to predict the length of the cable, if the actual equipment fails to work.

Also, cekodok again today! This delicious thing deserves a better name, far better, heh.

Quick, 4 cucuk left!

The Twenty-Eighth Day

Remember the cable that went under the knife two day ago? I was asked to compile all the data related on the cable such as the partial discharge (PD) test result and the failure analysis report to form a case study on the reliability of the PD results. So I did some study on some case study samples and collected the required data. All I need left is the failure analysis report which the person in charge is still working on.

On a totally unrelated note, on some days a person of The Team would be generous enough to bring food to The Lab, and it has never been me, not yet! Most of the time it was cekodok. Honestly, I was never a fan of cekodok but this changes recently. Is it because of the new environment? or the fact that it is free? but one thing for sure is because I'm hungry, heh.

Don't be fooled by the looks

The Twenty-Seventh Day

Again today, I accompanied the part-cable-part-failure-analysis-person to the FAG office for a researches sharing meeting. Yeah I know, most of my time is spent by following and watching, heh. It was not about cable this time, but about 2 incidents of exploding switchgears. They are trying to find the reasons that caused the incidents to happened based on pictures, previous records, and tripping logs.

It feels like watching CSI and House, but instead of human anatomies and crime scenes, there are burned scenes and burned switchgears, of course. Together in the meeting are a material expert and a cable expert, both from TNBR. It was interesting to see people with different expertises giving opinions on different perspectives. Also, free meal for those who attended. Got to love meetings.

Samples of burned switchgears

A corner in the FAG office. There is a labi2

inside the aquarium; totally not a failure

The Twenty-Sixth Day

As usual, the day is started with The Monday Buzz. I would like to share one of the topics presented which is about brain. As an employee, normally you do the same thing everyday and that will make your brain lazy which will cause problem when you actually need to use it. To prevent this, you need to train your brain constantly and some of the recommended methods are by playing musical instruments, solving puzzles, and by throwing away your calculator. Not literally of course. How come playing computer games is not included? Sigh.

After that, I accompanied a member of The Team to do a post-mortem on a section of a cable that is suspected to have a faulty joint based on the Partial Discharge test result. The post-mortem is done by the failure analysis group (FAG) *laughs* and the person I accompanied is also a part of that group. The findings from the post-mortem will be used as a case study and a lot of people will get benefit from it. Unfortunately, I have to leave before the cable surgery is done due to another event. Wow, what an eventful day.

A phase of a 33kV underground cable,

waiting to be cut

In the afternoon, I attended a talk on the new methods of fault location pin-pointing presented by two researchers. The first speaker talks about transmission line and the second speaker which is my co-supervisor talks about pilot cables. This monthly program gives opportunity for researchers to share about their researches to other employees and the audiences can ask questions at the same time. Very educational indeed.

You are both welcome!

The Twenty-Fifth Day

Back to my regular activities, helping the technical assistant doing reports on partial discharge tests. The reports are going to be presented to the TNB Distribution in the respective area of the tested cables.

For your information, the partial discharge test is being done everyday at different places and usually they will test two cables per day. Last week was in Cyberjaya, this week was KL, next week is somewhere in Johor, and the list goes on. The list of clients are already being scheduled for the next 2 months and they have to be out-stationed at least one week every month to fulfill the schedule.

Imagine doing this for years. I'm not sure if I'm able to show this level of commitment when I work later, heh.

The PD test van, has the same look with other TNB

utility vans. The identity of the guy remains a mystery..

The Twenty-Fourth Day

The last day of CBM Cable Course. Today, we learned about how to analyze the data that have been acquired from the cable tests. The analysis is very important to the determine the condition of the tested cable and action will be taken based on the analyzed result, which is the goal of CBM.

The speaker also presented several case studies on cable failures that he experienced himself. Based on that, it has been proven that the analysis does help. Sometimes, results may be not accurate due to certain factors so you have to rely on your instinct and that my friend requires years and years of practice. At the end of the day, we got to do a test on what we have learned in the course. It was an open book test and since I'm a practical student, the result of the test won't effect me in any way. Doing test for fun is really fun!

The test paper

The Twenty-Third Day

The second day of CBM cable course. More cable tests are being taught and in the evening, there is a demonstration on partial discharge (PD) and dielectric spectroscopy (DS) test. As I stated earlier, the details on all the tests will be done sometime in the future. Oh really? Yeah, this blog is in dire need of technical stuffs.

ILSAS, the place where I'm sitting for the course stands for Instit*t Latih*n Sult*n Ahm*d Shah. It is a training place for TNB employees and covers EVERYTHING that has to do with TNB. One thing that I love about ILSAS is the food provided which is really good. I won't mind having to attend courses there all year long.

The view of the classroom. The arrow shows..

..the teaching materials used for the course

The Twenty-Second Day

After about 5 weeks without academic lectures, I got to hear them again today in the CBM Cable Course that is held in ILSAS, which is located close to my university. The course is actually for TNB engineers and executives all around the country that involves in cable maintenance.

Several slots in the course are handled by members of The Team and due to that, I felt less awkward being around those engineers. Also, my good buddy from highschool happened to be one of the participants, which makes this even cooler. Special thanks to The Colleague for taking the initiative to join the course, now I'm not stucked with my regular activities, heh.

The course is about underground cable, the cable construction, types of failure, cable testing method, and many more. Most of the participants are those that you would call pakcik, but they are really proactive, asking good questions and giving opinions based on their past experience, and this makes the class exciting. After the lunch break, we got to see how the test equipments are used and got to try them ourselves. The course give me more understandings on what I have learned in the past few weeks.

The notice on the class door

Participants watching a test being done

I will write about the cable tests when there is nothing else for me to write about, heh. In the evening, I went back to TNBR and got to play ping-pong with the technicians. You got sayur'd. Well, I haven't played for a long time. You will get sayur'd either way. Grrr.. give me a week or two and we will see, hopefully. >_>

The Twenty-First Day

Monday. Yay. In this morning assembly, the managing director of the company, which will be known here as The Director, came out on stage to talk to the TNBRians. He started his speech by praising them for their synchronism in the quick-upper-body-exercise earlier while he was watching from the back. Who wouldn't work properly when your boss is watching you from behind, heh. He pointed out that everyone has to be synchronized in achieving the mission and vision of the company.

After that, he continued on attitude crashing, which will eventually happened in one's life. Putting it short, to overcome them you need to maintain the right attitude, realize that it will not last forever, make major decisions before it gets worse, and communicate with knowledgeable people.

The speech is quite long actually, and you can see people moving their legs and bodies uncomfortably, yawning, and making small noises hoping that The Director will get the sign. It was funny. It feels exactly like the highschool's assembly when the principal is giving a speech. Oh, the memories.

View inside The Hall, plus bad lighting >_>

The Twentieth Day

Several weeks before I entered as an intern, The Team has floated a tender on PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) which includes safety shoes, helmet, gloves, and safety vests and quite a number of companies showed their interest. Today, they held a meeting to choose which one of the participating companies will be given the tender and I was fortunate to be there to observe the meeting.

The Team compared the items offered by the companies with the specifications and requirements stated in the tender. From there, the companies are shortlisted and will be brought to the higher-ups for further actions. The summary? With the current specifications, no companies are able to provide a size 13 safety shoes, as one of The Team is a proud wearer of that size. I bet you never knew anyone with that shoe size, hoho.

After the afternoon prayer, I went for another cable testing in Cyberjaya. The PE (Pencawang Elektrik), where the cable is going to be tested is located just across S*kolah S*ri P*teri but unfortunately, the students suddenly went missing, heh. Things went as usual, lots of waiting involved but I am starting to get the hang of it. Waiting is part of the job.

The Visit #3

Flagship Village is like the coolest village name among the villages that I knew. Agreed? Anyway, today's entry marked the end of the first month of my internship. 2 months to go and yet I still haven't learned much from them. Ich muss richtig Gas geben..