Zakaria El Intissar

Zakaria El Intissar is an automation and industrial computing engineer with 12+ years of experience in power system automation, electrical protection, and SCADA systems. He founded InsulationTesting.com to share practical, field-tested guides on insulation resistance testing, equipment, and industry standards. His writing is used by electricians and maintenance engineers worldwide. Based in Morocco.

Author Archives: Zakaria El Intissar

IEC 61621 Arc Resistance Test: The 420-Second Ladder Explained

Arc resistance is a stopwatch reading. You put two tungsten electrodes on a flat sample, strike a high-voltage, low-current arc discharge across the surface between them, make the arc progressively nastier every 60 seconds, and write down the second at which the material gives up. That number, in seconds, is the result. The standard sets no universal pass/fail… Read More: IEC 61621 Arc Resistance Test: The 420-Second Ladder Explained »

Tan Delta: Complete Windings vs Individual Bars & Coils

IEC 60034-27-3 covers two very different test objects under one method: individual bars and coils, and complete stator windings. They use the same tan δ measurement, but they answer different questions, run with different setups, and get judged by different rules. Treating a complete-winding result like a bar result — or comparing the two directly — is a… Read More: Tan Delta: Complete Windings vs Individual Bars & Coils »

Third Harmonic Method for Surge Arresters: B1 vs B2 and the Voltage Harmonic Error

If your utility owns one arrester diagnostic instrument, it is probably a third harmonic meter. Clamp the earth lead, read a number, log it. No connection to a VT, no outage, no voltage reference of any kind. That convenience is the reason the method spread. It is also the reason so many arrester monitoring programmes produce numbers nobody… Read More: Third Harmonic Method for Surge Arresters: B1 vs B2 and… »

Surge Arrester Leakage Current Testing: What the Resistive Component Actually Tells You

A surge arrester spends almost its entire life doing nothing. Between operations it sits there as an insulator with a very small current flowing through it. That current is the only window you have into its condition while it stays in service. The problem is that most of what you measure is capacitive current, not the resistive component… Read More: Surge Arrester Leakage Current Testing: What the Resistive Component Actually… »

Guard Ring Electrodes for Tan Delta Bar & Coil Testing

When a stator bar is installed in its slot, the conductive slot coating is in electrical contact with the grounded core and the geometry is defined by the slot. Pull the bar out for a laboratory test, and you have to reproduce that slot-electrode arrangement with temporary electrodes. Get that reconstruction wrong and you measure the electrode system,… Read More: Guard Ring Electrodes for Tan Delta Bar & Coil Testing »

How Tan Delta Is Measured: Bridges and Digital Systems

Tan δ is a small number measured against a demanding background. You are resolving a resistive current a thousand times smaller than the capacitive current beside it, at high voltage, with stray capacitance to earth trying to corrupt the reading. The instrument matters. IEC 60034-27-3 recognizes three ways to make the measurement, and each one exists to solve… Read More: How Tan Delta Is Measured: Bridges and Digital Systems »

Tan Delta vs Partial Discharge Testing: Which to Use

Both tan δ and partial discharge testing react to the same underlying defect — voids in stator ground-wall insulation that discharge under voltage. So it is easy to assume they are two ways of doing one job, and to pick whichever your lab already owns. They are not interchangeable. They answer two different questions, and the difference decides… Read More: Tan Delta vs Partial Discharge Testing: Which to Use »

IEC 60034-27-3 Explained: Clause-by-Clause Guide

IEC 60034-27-3 is the standard that governs dielectric dissipation factor — tan δ — measurement on the stator winding insulation of rotating machines. This is a section-by-section walk through the document, in the order the standard itself uses, so you can find and understand any clause quickly. For the test in practice rather than the document structure, start… Read More: IEC 60034-27-3 Explained: Clause-by-Clause Guide »

IEC 60034-27-3 Limits: tan δ Acceptance Criteria

Before IEC 60034-27-3, dissipation factor limits for stator insulation were mostly private — each manufacturer and utility worked to its own internal numbers. The standard put a public set on the table. That was useful, and it was immediately controversial, because a single set of numbers has to cover insulation systems that behave quite differently. So the limits… Read More: IEC 60034-27-3 Limits: tan δ Acceptance Criteria »

Tan Delta Tip-Up and Delta Tan Delta Explained

A single tan δ reading tells you how lossy a winding’s insulation is at one voltage. What the insulation does as the voltage rises tells you why. That behavior — the slope of the tan δ curve — is where the diagnostic value lives, and it is captured by two numbers: delta tan delta and the tip-up. This… Read More: Tan Delta Tip-Up and Delta Tan Delta Explained »