Maintenance personnel need to prioritize their repair efforts. So we provide you with a Repair Priority Rating for each exception identified in this report. This Repair Priority Rating comes from subjective and lor objective ratings.

Subjective Ratings are determined by your qualified assistant or representative who considers how important the potential problem is to the safe and profitable operation of the system.

When a thermographer performs a qualitative infrared inspection (takes no temperatures), the only rating is the Subjective Repair Priority Rating.

Temperature Severity Ratings are objective and based on temperatures taken by the thermographer. Exception and other reference temperatures are compared to industry standards and guidelines to produce an objective Temperature Severity Rating. When the infrared inspection is quantitative, we have used the following temperature criteria to assign Temperature Severity Ratings to the exceptions:

Experienced Based Standard:

1) 0-10 C Deg: corrective measures should be taken at the next maintenance period

2) 10- 20 C Deg: corrective measures required as scheduling permits

3) 20- 40 C Deg: corrective measures required ASAP

4) 40- C Deg and above: corrective measures required IMMEDIATELY

When the thermographer provides a quantitative infrared inspection (takes temperatures), the Subjective and Temperature Severity Ratings are averaged to give you a recommended Average Repair Priority Rating.

While these repair ratings will help you prioritize your maintenance efforts, you must understand that the failure curves of many electrical and mechanical components are not linear and predictable. Therefore, you should investigate and repair all reported exceptions as soon as possible. And once repaired, each should be re-inspected i.e. post scan to assure that its temperature is normal and that the potential problem has been corrected. Note that for every problem always inspect for physical damage to determine repair or replacement of the particular component identified.

There are no rules for the assessment of excess temperatures which are measured on indirectly overheated surfaces. Indirect overheating can be caused by hidden faults, e.g. cracks inside a breaker where the temperature is measured from the outside.

Experience shows that oil insulated transformers and breakers with internal faults where an approximately temperature increase of 10% has been measured on the surface are considerably hotter inside. Very often the faulty parts are severely bumt.