About the Users Group Meetings: UGM

The Ultra Violet (UV) Inspection – Users Group Meeting (UGM) is a gathering of Operation & Maintenance (O&M) personnel of electric utilities that practice UV inspection technology for preventative maintenance. This year the meeting was a joint EPRI-OFIL event and took place at EPRI's facilities in Charlotte North-Carolina, USA.

UGM objectives

The objectives of the meetings are to promote the understanding of the aspects of using the UV inspection technology and the implications of corona discharges on lines, insulators and substation components.

UGM includes lectures by experts from high voltage research centers in the academy and industry; Presentations by experienced users of UV inspection; Workshop about the proper and correct use of the DayCor camera; Open forum discussions. During the meetings participant exchange and share experience and information.

Who should be attending?

• Potential users who are familiar with IR and Ultrasound inspection techniques and wish to learn about and assess UV inspection technology
• UV inspection users who want to increase their knowledge or improve the understanding of how coronah affects insulators and other components of electric grid
• Users who wish to exchange information and know-how with colleagues
• Utility executives
• Maintenance engineers in transmission, distribution, substation and testing laboratories

2005 Users Group Meeting

The 2005 EPRI-OFIL Ultra Violet (UV) Inspection – Users Group Meeting (UGM) took place at EPRI's facilities in Charlotte North-Carolina, USA in May 2-5, 2005. About 90 users and prospects from all over the world attended the meeting. This successful event was an assembly of operation and maintenance personnel, novices and experienced users, researchers from high voltage labs, potential users and professors from the academy. The purpose of the meeting was to study all sorts of aspects of Corona inspection in various applications and understand their implications and meanings.
We wish to thank all presenters for their contribution to the success of the event. We also thank all participants and attendees for choosing to spend 3 days with corona freaks.

Get the UGM CD

Pictures from the fourth UGM

2004 Users Group Meeting

The third annual Users Group Meeting (UGM) was held on February 2004 in Orland Florida. About 70 international participants gathered, shared their experience in daytime UV inspection, and exchanged tips for corona inspection & electrical utilities predictive maintenance.
Some of the world leading corona researchers lectured and brought the discussions to a high professional level. Prof. Sarma Maruvada (formerly with IREQ, Canada and the author of Corona Performance of High Voltage Transmission Lines) gave lectures on 'The physics of corona and gap discharges' and on 'AC and DC transmission lines corona effects'.
Prof. Ravi S. Gorur of Arizona State University - High Voltage Insulation Laboratory lectured gave presentations on 'Effects of corona on non ceramic and polymeric housing materials' and on 'Corona monitoring of non ceramic insulators'.
Dr. Dirk Borneburg of the Eurotest Lab, RWE Germany, gave a presentation on 'Sensitivity tests of partial discharge detection withe the DayCor II camera', and many others.
We are presenting in this issue of Seeing-Corona outstanding ROI (Return On Investment) evidence stories of the use of UV inspections for locating radio-interference (RI) problems for the FAA airtrafic control tower in Rochester, NY.
Another issue presented is solving severe contamination problems in Winyah generating plant
New users have joined us lately, whom we welcome warmly, and hope to see in the upcoming UGM, hopefully, this summer.  --up>

February 2004; The 3th UV Inspection Users Group Meeting