Enhancing SF6 insulation reliability and preventing GIS failures at India’s largest oil refinery

Overview

A power plant at India’s largest oil refinery faced reliability challenges with its high-voltage gas-insulated switchgear (HV GIS) systems, which are essential to the refinery’s power distribution. Over time, electrical, mechanical, and environmental stress led to deterioration of SF₆ insulation integrity in sealed GIS compartments. Minor degradation from micro-leakages, moisture, or by-products during switching initiated internal partial discharge (PD) activity.

Without continuous monitoring, this PD activity went unnoticed, increasing the risk of insulation failure and extended repair cycles. Rugged Monitoring provided the refinery’s plant with continuous visibility into its critical assets through a comprehensive partial discharge monitoring system.

The Challenge

The refinery relied on periodic manual inspections of SF6 gas conditions, which failed to detect localized insulation defects or early-stage PD activity:

Absence of Continuous PD Visibility

No real-time visibility into internal discharge activity occurring inside sealed GIS compartments
Delayed Detection of SF₆ Insulation Degradation

The lack of correlation increased the risk of undetected insulation weakening and sudden dielectric failure.

IMPACT OF GIS FAILURES:

High repair and replacement costs
Long outage durations often last weeks or months
Extensive internal damage to sealed compartments

The Rugged Monitoring Solution

To digitalize its GIS maintenance strategy, the refinery partnered with Rugged Monitoring to deploy an advanced online PD monitoring ecosystem:

UHF partial discharge sensors

Installed at strategic GIS measurement points to detect electromagnetic emissions from internal PD activity
PD monitoring module

For high-speed signal acquisition, noise discrimination, and reliable event detection under live operating conditions
RM EYE Asset Performance Management (APM) suite

For centralized analytics, data-driven insights, and real-time visibility.
PD Live / PD Connect analytics

Combined with expert diagnostics for PD pattern analysis, severity classification, and defect identification

The Outcome

The deployment of Rugged Monitoring’s complete GIS PD monitoring ecosystem delivered measurable operational and reliability benefits:

Real-time visibility into GIS insulation health
Early detection of low-level and evolving PD activity
Reduced risk of forced GIS outages
A strengthened predictive maintenance strategy

Rugged Monitoring’s advanced online partial discharge monitoring solution marked a critical step toward true GIS asset digitalization for one of India’s most critical industrial power networks. By overcoming the limitations of periodic SF₆ gas checks and enabling continuous insight into internal PD activity, the refinery now operates its HV GIS assets with greater confidence, reduced risk, and improved operational resilience.

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