KARIANGAU POWER, BALIKPAPAN,

INDONESIA
2 x 15 MW CFBC Power Plant
KP/SWRO#2 MOTOR
SWRO HP#2 Motor Bearing Failure

Issue No: 01 Issue Date:21/05/2019 Revision: Revision Date: Page 1 of 1

Equipment Name : SWRO HP#2 Motor Bearings Failure

Date : 18.05.2019 Time : 03:40 hrs
Date of Restoring : Time of Restoring :
First Observation of Tripping / Stoppage :
SWRO HP#2 Motor tripped at 03:40 Hrs, Physical inspection was done and observed motor DE & NDE
Temperatures were above 100 DegC. As the motor was manually rotated abnormal sound was
observed from Bearings.
Reasons of B/D :
1) Fluting Damage/Electrical Pitting.
Action Taken to Prevent:
1) Insulated Bearings.
2) Installing dv/dt filter between the drive & motor.
3) Proper Earthing/ Earth pit.
Root Cause Analysis Tripping/ Stoppage:
Variable frequency drives convert AC input voltage to DC then back to AC by using PWM. AC voltage
pulses are controlled by IGBT’s. IGBT’s have fast switching time, which reduces the energy losses &
allows drive to use a higher carrier frequency for sending output voltage pulses to motor, but downside
the fast switching creates unwanted capacitance between the motor stator & rotor, when this voltage
accumulates on a motor shaft, it often finds the path to least resistance to ground via the motor
bearings. When this voltage exceeds dielectric strength of lubrication, it discharges through motor
bearings to ground.
Pervious Conditioning Monitoring Record:

Equipment WPNO Winding Resistance in Ohms Lubrication

SWRO HP-2 1551 0.3 0.3 0.3 Done
Date: 27.04.2019
Date: 03.05.2019

Vertical Horizontal Axial Vertical Horizontal Temperature

velocity- velocity- velocity- velocity- velocity-
Degree of Celcius
mm/s mm/s mm/s mm/s mm/s
DE NDE DE NDE Load
3.25 3.93 3.01 1.55 2.50 60 44 179
2.57 3.37 2.29 1.53 2.50 64 60 180

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