Hitachi Energy: “Preventive Maintenance Starts with a Holistic View”

How do you create a maintenance plan that not only detects faults in time, but also reduces vulnerability and strengthens operational reliability? At the Maintenance Strategy Conference on March 12, Hitachi Energy will participate and share how they work together with customers to create more robust and secure maintenance – with a focus on the whole, the risks, and the consequences.

– It is not enough to only look at condition-based maintenance for an individual unit. You have to relate it to what function it has and what is affected at the site or system level if it fails, says Håkan Enbäck, Head of High-Voltage Service at Hitachi Energy.

A service partner that helps customers secure operations

Hitachi Energy is a global technology leader in electrification with a well-established and mature service organization in Sweden and globally. The company itself does not own facilities, but is an important partner for many who do. With a large installed product base among Swedish customers, the service organization works with maintenance of high-voltage equipment, transformers, and other critical components in the energy system.

– We are a service organization that performs maintenance for our clients and their products. Our mission is to ensure safe and reliable operation of the equipment they use, says Elin Johansson, Head of Service at Hitachi Energy Sweden.

Customers range from industry and grid operators to data centers – socially critical operations where reliability and availability are absolutely crucial.

Proactive work to avoid surprises

A central part of Hitachi Energy’s approach is shifting the focus from reactive to proactive maintenance.

– It’s about working preventively, before anything happens, based on how the equipment is used, where it is located in the system, and how critical it is. We want to help customers plan smarter. We want customers to focus on being proactive and, together with us, work with preventive service so that we actually don’t end up in situations where something has already happened. That’s where we can add the most value, says Elin Johansson.

The proactive work may, for example, involve Hitachi Energy working together with the customer to develop strategies that take into account condition, age, location in the grid, and domino effects if a component fails.

Reliability studies – a review of the entire facility

To create robustness, you need to start with a holistic picture. One recommendation is to conduct a reliability study where all equipment at a site is reviewed, not just the most expensive or oldest.

– You want to look at the whole to understand how components are connected and what affects what. A transformer that has been in operation five years beyond its calculated lifetime does not necessarily have to be in a risk zone, says Håkan Enbäck.

With such a review, it becomes easier to prioritize correctly: which measures need to be taken first, which investments are most critical, and how to avoid unplanned outages.

– You want to be able to trust that it works when it’s supposed to work, and that during the planned maintenance outage you can do what you need to ensure operations run smoothly for the rest of the year, says Elin Johansson.

When the power goes out, consequences escalate quickly

In the energy system, small faults can have major ripple effects. For industry, an outage can mean enormous costs in lost production. For grid operators, a shutdown in the middle of winter can become a socially critical issue.

– No one wants the grid to go down, so we work to reduce that risk, says Håkan Enbäck.

He also emphasizes the importance of thinking about redundancy and vulnerability in the grid, and that maintenance is not just about “taking care of a product”, but about understanding the entire chain.

– All links in a chain are important. If one fails, they all fail, he says.

Why Hitachi Energy is participating in Maintenance Strategy on March 12

For Hitachi Energy, the Maintenance Fair and the Maintenance Strategy Conference are important meeting places – both to share experiences and to capture how the industry views the future of maintenance.

– One function on our part is to see whether the messages or ideas we have around maintenance resonate with others and whether we are like-minded, says Håkan Enbäck.

The message they want to convey to participants is clear: Reliable preventive maintenance requires a broader approach than measurement data from individual components.

– We want to take responsibility for our products throughout their lifecycle and ensure that together we shift towards becoming more proactive. No one wants surprises in this industry. How can we together ensure predictability in what we do?, says Elin Johansson.

– We have been in this country for over 125 years. Of course we have a legacy to preserve and take care of, says Håkan Enbäck.

Meet Hitachi Energy at the Maintenance Strategy Conference on March 12

Do you want to learn more about how you can create a more robust maintenance program, prioritize the right actions, and reduce the risk of unplanned outages? Don’t miss Hitachi Energy’s participation at the Maintenance Strategy Conference on March 12 in conjunction with the Maintenance Fair.

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