Qualitrol engineer and Iris cofounder Greg Stone was recognized at this year’s IEEE conference with the Richard Harold Kaufmann Award for advancements in rotating machine insulation evaluation and testing, Qualitrol announced in the press release.

Greg’s role in creating the first widely used commercial online partial discharge (PD) instrument has benefited electric utility companies by providing advanced diagnostics for assessing the condition and the need for maintenance of aging power equipment.

The challenge in detecting PD is being able to separate it from electric noise prevalent in power systems. Stone’s work made it possible to separate PD signals from noise to facilitate online measurements and enable assessment of the condition of a machine’s insulation system.

To achieve this, he characterized how PD and noise pulses propagate in machine windings and measured pulse shape characteristics. He then helped develop algorithms to enable the online monitoring. Stone’s recent work has addressed the challenges of detecting PD in variable-speed drives to avoid premature failure, the release said.

An IEEE Fellow, Stone is a dielectrics engineer with (and cofounder of) Iris Power, L.P., Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Source: Qualitrol