About the Seminar

About the Seminar

History

This seminar derived from an EPRI report on rewinding motors for the electric power industry completed in March 1996 for Jan Stein of the EPRI Fossil Generation Group in Palo Alto, CA. The report was followed by a course book which is the basis of the revised book we use today. 

The seminar was originally sponsored by Jan Stein’s Generation group at EPRI.  Presentations were made at different repair shops around the country. EPRI’s costs were too high and they couldn’t break even over time, so they eventually leased the course to Jarsco Engineering. EPRI was limited to EPRI members, but Jarsco was not. Jim Michalec was added to help with the presentations and in 2000 the course was expanded to 3 days by adding Elton Floyd and expanded material for the third day. At the suggestion of one seminar attendee, material on insulation qualification and on testing was moved from the motor rewind sequence material to Day 3 AM so that this material would not interrupt the flow of the rewind presentations, and Elton Floyd’s presentation was extended over to Day 3 PM and Day 4 AM. A fourth presenter, Ric Covarrubias helped in 2006-7.  In 2008, Mike Howell (now with EASA) replaced Ric. In 2013 Jim Bryan of EASA replaced Mike.  In August 2014 Chase Fell joined the team to replace Jim Bryan.

Since March of 2001, we have held the seminar here at the TECO Westinghouse facility in Round rock. The staff here and their management have supported us like no one else with whom we have previously worked. They have excellent facilities here as you will see, and their cooperation has helped to improve the quality of the seminar in many ways.

For the past several years, Jarsco has been a contractor for the EPRI Large Electric Motor User’s Group, LEMUG, under Wayne Johnson out of Charlotte, NC. LEMUG was founded for and largely supported by the nuclear power industry. LEMUG developed a number of ideas for disseminating motor information, but needed help in completing some of the documents. Jarsco’s task was to complete several reports they had started including motor rewind specifications and motor maintenance guides. Later, new documents were prepared based on LEMUG’s ideas such as a guide for VPI resin treatment of motors and a motor uprate guide. As these projects have been completed, new information has been fed into this course in an attempt to keep it current and to improve its content. Also, as new material is found in various publications, we have added to the book for easy reference. In this course we have a blend of basic motor fundamentals and more advanced material. We do not expect you to absorb everything that is presented, so we have documented most of the material so that you can refer to it later as you need to. 

Principal Investigator

 Jim Oliver assembled most of the course material while an EPRI contractor except for Elton’s material. Jim received a BSEE degree from the University of Maine, a MSEE degree from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and took several business courses at NYU. For many years Jim was an engineer or an engineering consultant on electric machinery projects for American Electric Power, National Electric Coil, Bechtel Corporation, EPRI and later on with his own Jarsco Engineering Corp. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.  

Instructors

Chase Fell is Vice-President of Engineering for Jay Electric Co. and Jay’s Precision Coil Co. of Birmingham, AL. He has previously worked at Anderson Consulting, Reliance Electric, ESSEX- Brownell Wire and Montevallo Electric. He holds a BSEE degree from the University of Alabama and a BA degree from Auburn University. Chase brings a wealth of experience to the seminar from actually repairing large industrial size induction and synchronous motors, DC motors, hydro generators turbine generators as well as coil manufacturing.

Elton Floyd has 52 years of experience in the electric power industry. His primary experience is with electrical rotating machinery, particularly with steam turbine generators and the large boiler auxiliary motors. He has had responsibility for technical support for other major power plant electrical and electronic equipment. Elton is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas.