It’s the beginning of a new year and time to remind ourselves of the need for an annual review of our alarm setpoints. We should annually review the setpoints to make sure they are not too conservative resulting in nuisance alarms, or too liberal resulting in missed indications leading to unexpected failures. Electric motor windings and insulation technology does change so it is critical to check in with your equipment vendors during this review to identify any default setpoint changes they recommend and to learn of any new tests or alarms that have been added through software updates. Be careful not to allow a more conservative setpoint established by your equipment vendor to overwrite a local setpoint developed from experience with onsite analytics and historical knowledge. Pay close attention to any application or system changes that would demand a new baseline for alarm setpoint establishment and learning.

Many alarms are based on a comparison to baseline so once the baseline is completed it is important to establish these alarm setpoints. Although your equipment vendors should be keeping you abreast of industry standard changes, it is a good idea to check in with the high profile standards for any changes affecting your industry. For the electrical reliability industry IEEE, EASA, and NEMA are examples of high profile industry standards that your electrical reliability team should be aware of.