Beer mat doodle leads to Queen's Award

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 24, 2007

EA Technology has won a Queen's Award for Enterprise for its UltraTEV detector - a design that was born on the back of a beer mat in a Dublin pub.

EA Technology's UltraTEV detector was born on the back of a beer mat in a Dublin pub.

Now it has become a world-beating product and won the Queen's Award for Innovation 2007 - one of Britain's highest industrial honours, described by one recipient as "a corporate knighthood".

EA Technology Instruments Director Neil Davies and Instruments Manager Colin Vickers were waiting for a ferry back to Britain in 2002 after visiting Irish utility ESB, when they used a beer mat to draw up the specification for a new type of handheld instrument to measure partial discharge activity in HV assets.

They called it the UltraTEV detector, because it was the first instrument to combine sensors for both ultrasonic and transient earth voltage (TEV) effects in a single handheld unit.

It has gone on to win sales worth millions of pounds and advance the case for condition-based asset management with every power company in Britain - and with network operators from California to China.

Davies explains: "The UltraTEV detector is a bit like the iPod, because there was nothing else like it on the market before and it uses the latest technology to do things in a new way".

"Like the iPod, it has created its own market, because it's exactly what customers were looking for - but they didn't realise that until we invented it".

"The specifications we scribbled down over a few beers turned out to be right first time, but it took months of investment, development and testing to come up with the finished product".

The UltraTEV detector is the world's first dual sensor instrument which accurately measures partial discharge activity in HV assets, long before the effects can be detected by human senses.

A single button turns it on and a simple traffic light LED system indicates whether assets are working satisfactorily, require further tests or urgent investigation.

Calibration of the instrument is based on EA Technology's unique database of working with HV assets for more than 30 years and understanding patterns of deterioration.

"The UltraTEV detector is easier to use than a TV remote control and requires very little training, but it is extremely effective as a first pass method of measuring asset condition, whether on individual HV assets or whole plants and networks", says Davies.

"Engineers previously had to use several pieces of complex and expensive equipment to do the same job - or trust to guesswork, using sight, sound and smell".

"Just as importantly, it's also a world first as a warning device when equipment is dangerous for people to approach and may be about to fail catastrophically".

"When this happens, HV equipment can explode with the force of a bomb, so companies are increasingly issuing UltraTEV detectors to all staff as personal safety monitors".

"The bottom line is that UltraTEV detectors save money by making asset management more efficient - and they save lives".

UltraTEV detectors are now used across the power industry worldwide and by other operators of HV equipment, including petrochemicals and manufacturing companies.