Support for the S1-568, S1-1068, and S1-1568 insulation resistance testers
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Troubleshooting
Unfortunately, lithium-ion batteries eventually wear out and can no longer accommodate a charge. This event is a common and, sooner or later, inevitable issue, but fortunately it is easily corrected. Replacement batteries are available from Megger, and you can quickly change one following the instructions in the User Guide.
Do a visual inspection of the unit, and don’t overlook the lead set. It is understandable to focus on the instrument and take the lead set for granted, but the leads are commonly knocked about from handling more than the instrument. In particular, the strain relief at the end of the lead becomes damaged - its absence is a strong indication that the lead set soon needs to be replaced. Damaged leads tend to affect the most negligible leakage currents first, so the instrument may not be able to indicate measurement into the tera-ohm (TΩ) range. This symptom means that the lead set should be repaired or replaced.
These are control and measurement boards post error codes. These appear on the display as “E” followed by a 1- or 2-digit number. The User Guide gives brief definitions. These are not user-adjustable. They indicate component failures or calibration resets that a Megger repair technician or authorised repair centre must perform.
This symptom indicates that the power supply transformer has broken off the power supply board, usually due to rough handling and/or dropping. The transformer, being relatively heavy, will come loose from its mountings. This breakage interrupts or terminates power to the circuitry, resulting in a ‘dead’ instrument. Contact your local Megger repair technician or authorised repair centre.
Yes - remove the S1 from the AC source. Press both the “OK” and backlight buttons while switching the main rotary switch from the “OFF” position to the “settings” icon.
Insulation tests are automatically stopped in breakdown mode, and “brd” is displayed when a fault causes the applied voltage to drop rapidly. Burn mode IR tests ignore breakdown and continue to test the insulation and are, therefore, destructive tests. Burn mode is used to purposely create a carbon track in insulation to facilitate fault location.
Interpreting test results
Insulation resistance readings should be considered relative. They can be quite different for one motor or machine tested three days in a row, yet it does not mean bad insulation. What matters is the trend in readings over a longer period, showing lessening resistance and warning of coming problems. Periodic testing is, therefore, your best approach to preventive maintenance of electrical equipment, using record cards or SW to trend the results over time.
Whether you test monthly, twice a year, or annually depends upon the equipment's type, location, and importance. For example, a small pump motor or a short control cable may be vital to a process in your plant. Experience is the best teacher in setting up the scheduled periods for your equipment.
We recommend making these periodic tests in the same way each time. That is, with the same test connections and test voltage applied for the same length of time. Additionally, we recommend performing tests at about the same temperature or correcting them to the same reference temperature. A record of the relative humidity near the equipment during the test is also helpful in evaluating the reading and trend.
In summary, here are some general observations about how you can interpret periodic insulation resistance tests and what you should do with the result:
| Condition | What to do |
|---|---|
| Fair to high values and well maintained | No cause for concern |
| Fair to high values but showing a constant tendency towards lower values | Locate and remedy the cause and check the downward trend |
| Low but well-maintained values | Condition is probably acceptable, but you should investigate the cause of low values |
| So low as to be unsafe | Clean, dry out, or otherwise recondition the insulation to acceptable values before placing equipment back in service (test wet equipment after drying out) |
| Fair or high values, previously well-maintained but showing a sudden decrease | Make tests at frequent intervals until you locate and remedy the cause of low values; or until the values have become steady at a lower level but safe for operation |
The resistance of insulating materials decreases markedly with an increase in temperature. However, we’ve seen that tests by the time-resistance and step-voltage methods are relatively independent of temperature effects, giving relative values.
To make reliable comparisons between readings, you should correct the measurements to a base temperature, such as 20 °C, or take all your readings at approximately the same temperature.
A good rule of thumb is to halve the resistance for every 10 °C increase in temperature or, for every 10 °C decrease, double the resistance.
Each type of insulating material will have a distinct degree of resistance change with temperature. Factors have been developed, however, to simplify the correction of resistance values. Please refer to the document "Stitch In Time" to find such factors for rotating equipment, transformers, and cables (Section: Effect of Temperature on Insulation Resistance).
User guides and documents
FAQs
The S1-568 and S1-1068 can record insulation temperature and humidity measured by independent sensors.
During insulation testing, we are often so preoccupied with the resistance of the actual insulator that we forget the resistance path on the outer surface of the insulation material. However, this resistance path is a part of our measurement and can dramatically affect our measurements. For example, when dirt or some other contaminant is present on a bushing's outer surface, the surface leakage current can be up to ten times that flowing through the insulation.
The surface leakage presents as a resistance in parallel with the material's insulation resistance that we wish to isolate and measure. The instrument's measurement circuit can separate and ignore the surface leakage current when we use its guard terminal, performing a so-called three-terminal test. Surface leakage mitigation is often necessary when high resistance values are expected, such as when testing high voltage components like insulators, bushings, and cables. These tend to have large surface areas exposed to contamination resulting in high surface leakage currents across them.
You can select a downloading data function by switching to the ‘download via USB’ icon on the central rotary switch. Before starting a download, you must connect a USB cable between a PC and the USB port on the instrument or a Bluetooth connection setup to a suitably enabled PC or similar device.
PowerDB Pro, Advanced, and Lite are Megger’s asset and data management software packages with integrated forms for the S1 range of instruments. Ensure that the applicable version of PowerDB is loaded and running on the PC, then select the appropriate S1 by model number.
The filter has four settings: 10 s, 30 s, 100 s, and 200 s. It is also possible to turn off the hardware filter to speed up the response when no noise is present. If a one-minute spot test is to be performed, a suitable filter would be 10 s, or possibly 30 s activated towards the end of the test. Setting a longer filter would be meaningless because the test only lasts 60 s. The S1 range memorises all results in the current test to give an instantaneous meaningful filtered reading of results as long as the test duration is longer than the filter length.
