Test and diagnostic instruments for high-voltage and medium-voltage power equipment, supplied into New Zealand and Australia.

Every instrument on this page has been selected on how it behaves in the field rather than on how it reads in a catalogue, and is supported from Auckland by an engineer who has used equipment like it on live plant. If you tell us what you need to measure, we will tell you honestly whether one of these is the right tool — and when it is not.

Category 1 — Switchgear test equipment

Where the operating mechanism is accessible, measure it directly. One recorded operation gives contact timing, travel, mean velocity, overtravel and rebound as absolute values judged against published limits — the parameters defined in IEC 62271-100, so the result means the same thing to everyone who reads it. Contact resistance, coil current and minimum operating voltage are measured on the same visit, in the same isolated state.

Category 2 — Cable fault location

Fault location is two jobs at two scales. A reflectometer narrows kilometres to a few metres from one end of the circuit; a pinpointer, walked along the route, closes the last stretch to under a metre — which is the number that decides how much road you open. Between them sits a surge generator, because most faults on aged distribution cable hold off normal test voltage and break down only under stress. One sequence, three pieces.

Category 3 — Vibration & signal acquisition

On sealed 11–33 kV ring main units, and on SF₆ and vacuum breakers at 33 kV and above, there is nowhere to clamp a travel transducer sometimes— so the conventional mechanical characteristics test is not available. An accelerometer on the enclosure records the same sequence from outside: latch release, contact impact, damper action, settling. Compared against the same breaker's own earlier record, a binding linkage or a spring losing energy shows up as a change in that signature.

→ Browse all products — or tell us what you need to measure and we will point you at it.