Through the years, condition assessment of power equipment has been performed by applying a series of standard tests while having the unit out of service. However, the current trend of reduction of maintenance budgets and the growing need of reducing costs have forced the industry to search for non-conventional testing techniques capable of providing information about the condition of the unit on-line and without disruption of the system operating conditions.
Acoustic Emission (AE), Gas in oil chromatography (GIO) and Vibration testing are among the non-destructive techniques used for the condition assessment of power equipment on-line.