On January 9th, a group of 60 final year students from Universitas Sriwijaya (UNSRI), Palembang, Indonesia spent their 45 minutes to visit at the high voltage laboratory (HV Lab) at the Institute of High Voltage and High Current (IVAT) in conjunction with their official visit to the Faculty Electrical Engineering (FKE), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
Before arriving IVAT’s HV Lab, they were separated into 2 groups of 30 students to visit 2 main laboratories in FKE, i.e., the Robotic Laboratory and Wireless Communication Centre (WCC). Their main intention from the visit were not just to gain knowledge on what was the latest technology that UTM have been using, but also to gain some external exposure to new environment that might useful to get some ideas for their final year projects and their future research.
The students were welcomed to the HV Lab by the staff and viewed IVAT’s 4-minute corporate video. The activity continued by visiting around the main area of HV Lab. Dr. Mona Riza was an in-charge person to show the students around the lab and gave some explanation about the equipment and types of test that was done in HV Lab. At the end of the visiting session, they had the opportunity to witness a standard cable test using the HV Lab’s 2MV impulse generator. The test was conducted by Mr. Anuar Kamarudin, one the senior assistant engineers in IVAT. The students were amazed with the test since they were able to se a bright flashover in front of their naked eyes. The cable used in the test was the cable donated by Tenaga Nasional Berhad for research purposes. The test is one of the standard test that IVAT usually performs for cable companies. Aside of cable tests, IVAT also performed many other accredited impulse tests on other equipment depending on their customers’ request. These include switchgears, transformers and cable joints.
All the students gave active feedbacks and they were so excited to ask the personnel in-charge many questions regarding their research interest and equipment availability as well the expertise in IVAT. They hoped that they could visit UTM, especially IVAT again, to learn more about high voltage technology.
Finally, UTM hopes that all the students from UNSRI will be benefitted from their visit to the HV Lab. Thank you very much from UTM.
by Dr. Mona Riza Mohd Esa, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.