Energy Talks · 2026-05-21 · 19 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
56 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Daniel Gebhart and Hendrik Schleifer from Omicron explain why partial discharge monitoring is becoming essential for asset managers navigating aging electrical infrastructure. The core argument centers on stress factors driving adoption: unplanned downtime is costly and disruptive, while continuous monitoring provides real-time visibility into how assets actually behave under operating conditions - something offline diagnostics cannot capture. PD monitoring works like a wristwatch monitoring heart rate, continuously observing individual defects and their deterioration over time, enabling asset managers to skip unnecessary maintenance cycles or intervene earlier when conditions change rapidly. The episode contrasts temporary versus permanent monitoring strategies: permanent systems suit the most critical assets requiring fast reaction capability, while temporary monitoring - cycling a single device across less critical assets - offers a lower-cost entry point with comparable measurements over time. Partial discharge detection is prioritized over temperature or oil chemistry monitoring because it sensitively captures individual impulses anywhere in an asset, providing early warning like a smoke detector, whereas other parameters offer only integral views after significant degradation. The discussion covers how unforeseen defects discovered during planned outages can extend downtime and cascade costs, reputational damage, and operational disruptions. This episode serves operators evaluating whether to invest in PD monitoring infrastructure and deciding which assets to prioritize.
Time-based maintenance follows fixed schedules like annual or five-year intervals regardless of asset condition, while condition-based maintenance uses continuous monitoring data to determine if planned maintenance is actually needed, allowing managers to skip unnecessary interventions or accelerate them if deterioration accelerates.
Online monitoring captures electrical stress the asset experiences continuously in real operating conditions (three-phase), whereas offline diagnostics only examine one phase at a time in static conditions; continuous monitoring also detects rapid changes and provides early warning comparable to a smoke detector.
Monitoring one machine provides little insight into others of the same type; the better approach is either installing permanent systems on all critical machines or using temporary monitoring devices rotated through less critical assets at scheduled intervals with consistent settings.
Temporary monitoring uses pre-installed sensor connection points with standardized settings for comparable measurements over time, allowing trend analysis; traditional diagnostics vary in setup and conditions, making trend derivation difficult and requiring specialized expertise, whereas temporary monitoring requires only basic training to connect and start recording.
Partial discharge is sensitive enough to detect individual impulses at the moment they occur anywhere in an asset, providing early smoke-detector-like warning, while temperature and oil chemistry measurements only provide integral views of overall system health and typically only reveal problems after significant degradation has occurred.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode covers foundational concepts of PD monitoring (offline vs. online testing, temporary vs. permanent solutions, criticality-based budgeting) with adequate explanation, but relies heavily on analogies (heart rate monitor, smoke detector, blood pressure) rather than novel frameworks or surprising data. The practical distinction between time-based and condition-based maintenance is explained clearly but remains fairly standard industry thinking.
PD monitoring is quickly moving from a nice-to-have to an essential condition assessment tool for electrical assets, especially in aging infrastructures.
online monitoring similar to wearing a wristwatch that continuously monitors your heart rate. This is something that typically will not replace the visit of doctors once in awhile, but it gives you very good indication for overall status.
The core argument - that continuous monitoring enables condition-based rather than time-based maintenance - is well-established in asset management literature. The medical analogies (doctor visits, heart rate monitors, blood pressure) are common frameworks already circulating in monitoring discussions. The comparison of PD to a 'smoke detector' is a familiar industry metaphor. No contrarian positions or first-principles challenges are presented.
online monitoring similar to wearing a wristwatch that continuously monitors your heart rate
there is this smoke detector of electrical assets. Why do you consider partial discharge To be more effective than just monitoring temperature or oil chemistry?
Both guests are legitimate practitioners: Daniel Gebhart holds the role of 'partial discharge specialist and PD monitoring system product manager at Omicron,' and Hendrik Schleifer is a 'PD monitoring software developer and product owner at Omicron.' They speak from direct implementation experience with asset monitoring systems. However, both work for Omicron (the podcast's producer), raising potential bias concerns, and neither appears to be a senior asset manager or operator who has deployed these systems at enterprise scale.
Daniel Gebhart, a partial discharge specialist and PD monitoring system product manager at Omicron
Hendrik Schleifer, who was a PD monitoring software developer and product owner at Omicron
The episode lacks concrete numbers, named case studies, or quantified examples. Discussions remain largely theoretical - 'unplanned downtime costs something,' 'rotating machines typically have some partial discharge,' 'monitor for a month then move to the next machine' - without dollar figures, failure rates, time savings, or real deployment examples. The only specific details are methodological (temporary monitoring frequency, sensor installation) rather than outcome-focused.
Let's say one month, after awhile pick it up move to next machine then repeat this cycle in whatever interval that you wish so you could just rotate the device through or do these once every year.
after year nothing has changed your situation essentially same as before. you could potentially skip a maintenance phase on an offline diagnostic test.
The host (Scott Williams) asks open-ended setup questions that allow guests to explain concepts, but rarely challenges, pushes back, or deepens inquiry. Questions are largely softball and predictable ('what is PD?' 'why is this a breakthrough?' 'permanent or temporary?'). There are no follow-ups that probe assumptions, no disagreements explored, and no pressure for specifics. The conversation reads as a scripted educational delivery rather than genuine dialogue testing ideas.
PD monitoring is quickly moving from a nice-to-have to an essential condition assessment tool for electrical assets, especially in aging infrastructures. In this episode I will talk to my guests about the transition
Why is that such an important component for the condition of the asset?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Discover how partial discharge monitoring transforms asset management to reduce unplanned downtime. Aging infrastructure and the threat of unplanned downtime are pushing asset managers to rethink their maintenance strategies. In this episode of Energy Talks - the first of a two-part series on Partial Discharge (PD) monitoring for electrical power assets - OMICRON PD monitoring experts Daniel Gebhardt and Hendrik Schleifer discuss how PD monitoring is transforming electrical asset management. They explore the shift from traditional, time-based maintenance to proactive, condition-based strategies. Specifically, Daniel and Hendrik offer practical insights on implementing temporary and permanent PD monitoring to enhance asset reliability and planning. Specifically, they explain the differences between offline diagnostic PD testing and online PD monitoring and clarify when to choose temporary versus permanent systems. They also highlight how continuous, 24/7 PD monitoring provides asset managers and maintenance engineers with real-time insights into insulation health, allowing them to track defect development, predict faults, and plan maintenance proactively.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Welcome to Energy Talks, a regular podcast series featuring expert discussions on power system testing data management cyber security and important trends in the power industry. My name is Scott Williams from The Podcast Team at Omicron And I will be your host. Hello everyone! This episode was first in two-part series about online partial discharge monitoring A topic we have covered before on energy talks but it's always good to revisit.
PD monitoring is quickly moving from a nice-to-have to an essential condition assessment tool for electrical assets, especially in aging infrastructures. In this episode I will talk to my guests about the transition many asset managers and maintenance engineers are currently navigating as they move from time based or condition base maintenance. with help of continuous online monitoring We're going to look at the practical drivers behind this shift toward a more informed data-driven strategy for asset planning.
Joining me in this discussion is Daniel Gebhart, a partial discharge specialist and PD monitoring system product manager at Omicron. Also joining me is Hendrik Schleifer, who was a PD monitoring software developer and product owner at Omicron. Together they will discuss the benefits of using online PD monitoring to effectively assess the insulation condition of electrical assets especially when-and-where to use temporary or permanent PD monitoring solutions and how it results in greater peace of mind.
Daniel & Hendrick welcome to energy talks And thank you for joining me for this episode! Hi Scott thanks for having us. Hi Scott. In this episode, we are revisiting a topic that has been presented before on Energy Talks.
and What have you understood to be the stress factors that would lead them to consider implementing a continuous monitoring system? Asset managers, as same-as maintenance managers... have to take care about a lot of different topics around their assets. So what they really don't want is something unplanned.
They are planning lots of tasks and soon as you have unforeseen issues hitting you this gives your unplanned downtime. So what do you want? to have the best picture available off your asset so that you can plan, maintain or interact accordingly? If I may add.
if we look at machines in terms of partial discharge and assess criticality this typically requires a lot specific knowledge about topic. You would need access especially trained people who can assess PD situation with machine. Since this might be difficult to acquire at all times, PD Monitoring can help you in identifying the developing partial discharge defects of your machine. If we do diagnostics, normally are triggered by something.
Either had an incident or some changes but we're triggered and then look at the asset in offline state. Most of our assets have three-phase assets so electrical stress on the asset is totally different online than offline because it's one phase. So yes, offline is very good to have like an indepth on a specific phase. If you want to look for something very detailed, maybe also assess how can fix it and where need to fix but get an overall idea about the insulation of your acid is actually aging or developing if there might be some coming up?
The stress in real operating condition is interesting because that's what your acid sees. twenty four seven If we do monitoring and there doesn't matter if you do it temporarily, but if we do monitor We look at the asset in an online state. In the electrical stress It sees all the time. Hendrik how to online monitoring systems enable users To get the information they need quickly about asset installation condition without expert opinions.
what I've always liked There is this analogy between online monitoring and diagnostic PD measurements where online monitoring similar to wearing a wristwatch that continuously monitors your heart rate. This is something that typically will not replace the visit of doctors once in awhile, but it gives you very good indication for overall status. so I think online monitoring in terms of PD helps you a lot and continuously looking at individual defects and their development over time You get a sense of fault deterioration.
Let's say As an example, we look at a rotating machine and typically the rotating machine will have some partial discharge. The question is if it becomes problematic or not? And what online monitoring system allows you to do? just continuously observe each individual defect in its deterioration over time.
so after year nothing has changed your situation essentially same as before. you could potentially skip a maintenance phase on an offline diagnostic test. Interesting, and these offline diagnostic tests if not prompted by the situation often happen during planned maintenance. so there are these terms time-based versus condition based maintenance that have been referenced for years.
why is twenty four seven monitoring specifically the breakthrough? As Hendrik just mentioned, if you do a continuous monitoring... you have an all-time idea about your general status of the asset. So that actually gives us the base to decide if the time based maintenance which is done annually or every five years..
is needed at this point? Or if we might be able to prolong it? It also gives you the ideal if something changes more rapidly than expected. so If You Might Need To Do a maintenance intervention earlier than planned in your time-based scale.
This is only possible if you have the all-time idea about how it's your asset, or how its machine behaving because otherwise you cannot react on changes. And vice versa. I might add and maybe this is bit of soft argument but could just argue that gives certain peace of mind aspects. If nothing was changing when your machine...
and this what monitoring system will provide with their is no additional stress factor for you that your machine might act up in the near future. Based on your experience working with asset managers and maintenance engineers, what would you consider to be hidden costs of an unplanned outage beyond just a repair bill? I mean especially when talking about rotating machines we must make clear that normally a machine is not dying on PD so the outage itself it's most probably not unplanned but You are in an outage and you realize there are defects that have been evolving which will prolong your outage.
So, the whole outage plan is like thrown over... and we need to re-plan also everything which comes afterwards. Normally if one takes longer than expected because of unforeseen issues then every thing shifts. Cost factor is one.
You might have additional, let's say damages in terms of that. you are not able to get fully back online as planned and it may be a reputation issue if you're unable to fulfill your contractual deliveries you would have. Now when we say monitoring individual assets In many cases, there are a fleet of assets. So is it possible to monitor one machine and be able to reflect what might be going on in your other machines?
Or is it more beneficial to monitor each and every asset in the fleet?" There's typically not much conclusion that you can do if you just monitor one particular machine. Like even if it's of the same build type, you could probably never say that with one machine as a problem. The other one will as well...
That is just not related! There are essentially two options to do in this regard. One would be install and monitoring system on each critical rotating machine that your interested. On the other hand You can also do temporary monitoring.
That would be the idea that you take a monitoring device and install it on your machine for certain amount of time. Let's say one month, after awhile pick it up move to next machine then repeat this cycle in whatever interval that you wish so you could just rotate the device through or do these once every year. have comparison analysis between various points. when you took measurement with this very same machine if I might add.
You could say now, well this is very close to diagnostic measurement. It's on the one hand but you really do comparable measurements because for the diagnostic measurement normally either have internal people or an external company which comes by and connects with a measurement device that does a measurement. so every measurement can be different. when you do temporarily monitoring then connect with the same settings to a pre-installed connection point, so you have very comparable measurement of what we did.
A month ago or year ago... whatever! You are also able to derive a development trend from these measurements and actually assess if something is changing. Deriving a trend from diagnostic measurement is most often hard as conditions around just change too much for it really to be comparable.
If I might add, there is also the ease of use aspect. So for this comparability and same settings that you used at each individual measurement... you do not need special training. so like monitoring device would typically just do everything for you.
Your task when performing these measurements will be connecting the device then pressing a button to start recording predefined interval. Good point, so we've been talking about partial discharge and of course We've talked about it before on energy talks the importance Of partial discharge or PD measurement And of course PD monitoring as well. there are so many parameters that asset operators can refer to That will tell them about the condition of their machine Electrical parameters mechanical parameters.
but of all the things we've chosen We're focusing on partial discharge for monitoring. It's often referred to as a smoke detector of electrical assets. Why do you consider partial discharge To be more effective than just monitoring temperature or oil chemistry? I would say there are two things to it.
one, Of course is the alone aspect. Nobody else would go to The doctor and Just want know how good Or How long he will live by getting his blood pressure taken. So nobody in this daily life would rely on a single parameter and we should do the very same for our assets, so relying on a simple parameter to assess the health of an asset is not good but... And that's the other thing.
there are also for human some parameters which we would monitor For example The Blood Pressure To just give it an idea how the whole system Is behaving? as we can measure it very, very sensitively. We can measure single impulses so single discharges at any place in the asset while for example a lot of other measurements you mentioned DGA and oil-filled assets they are kind of integral. yeah I always only get an integral view off my parameter.
All of these parameters, even if they are monitorable so you can get them online normally don't get an idea about changes as it happens. So that's like the comparison to a smoke detector yeah? That should also go off soon. there is smoke and not when the room is filled then comes out from windows.
Good point! Going back to partial discharge in area on-line continuous monitoring whether permanent or temporary. What does partial discharge focus on? Maybe we take that step back to explain briefly what partial discharges are.
Like all our high voltage or also medium-voltage assets need some insulation between the voltage and ground, And this installation system is stressed by the electrical field. As long as everything in its normal parameters nothing will happen. But soon you start to locally overstress that insulation. you will have small discharges.
This is actually something which you can hear when your are under an overhead line in like rainy conditions, You'll hear this bristling sound Yeah? These are also small partial dischargers. They partially bridge the insulation Which is between a conductor and ground. And these partial dischages...
which happened in gas solid and fluid insulation. We want to detect them, we want to be able to alert before they develop into a full breakdown. so that's why looking at the partial discharges gives you an essential insight in the installation system of your asset. Why is that such an important component for the condition of the asset?
All our assets are designed to generate or transmit electrical energy. To have that energy generated and transmitted, we need a certain voltage level as this is driving current. This voltage level needs to be insulated on potential which is having that voltage to the surrounding, ground. And if this insulation fails, well you get a short circuit.
Everybody knows the short circuit will lead to the lights going off and it won't work! What is keeping up our insulation material? As soon as our insulation fails... the acid will not work anymore as designed.
So we've talked about temporary PD monitoring and permanent PD monitoring. Let's say an asset manager has a limited budget, how do they decide which assets get? permanent monitoring versus temporary monitoring? If you have a limited-budget of course You would look at the most critical as it first The ones where you really want to be able to react fast And this one should get a permanent monitoring.
So everything which is around Which is of course critical for operation otherwise you wouldn't have them but while might have a backup where you had the possibility to live with if it like is not available for certain time. So which are not that highly critical there, You would add sensors and set them up To be able to do a temporary measurement at every point in time so independent of your operation condition And then could go with temporarily monitoring on these assets. The nice thing most Installations have the connection point which can also be used to connect a permanent monitoring once you decide for it.
So, its not an either or it's more... The temporarily monitoring is first step and if you see advantage of that and feel need then you can upgrade that to a permanent twenty four seven monitoring. Okay! And your connecting both to permanently installed PD sensors?
Exactly That's thing definitely needs to do. You need to permanently install sensor as this is like the eyes into your asset to measure the PD. Okay, so we've covered why online PD monitoring matters to evaluate developing insulation defects in your assets. But identifying the need for a system is just the first step, and our upcoming Part Two episode we're going look at actual implementation specifically how handle partial discharge data without having an expert into minimize noise or false alarms.
so be sure join us for part two as get into technical side of using PD monitoring systems. Daniel and Hendrik, thank you very much for joining me before our discussion in part one. And I look forward to speaking with. Omicron has several years of experience in power system testing, data management and cybersecurity.
And offers a matching solution for your application. For more information visit our website at omicronenergy.com. Please join us on the next episode of Energy Talks.
Goodbye everyone!
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