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VIE vs Online DGA
Online DGA is the most widely deployed form of continuous transformer monitoring. It is also an invasive, threshold-based, point-solution approach that becomes cost-prohibitive at fleet scale. The utilities and operators that have deployed it have done so on a small fraction of their fleet — and accepted that the rest is unmonitored.
Online DGA
Installation
Non-invasive external mount. Under 30 minutes. No oil system penetration.
Invasive. Requires physical connection to transformer oil system. Ongoing maintenance of penetration point required.
Fleet coverage
Every transformer in the fleet, one platform, one dashboard.
Only transformers with hardware installed. Most fleets deploy on highest-risk assets only.
Monitoring method
Physics-based virtual model. Five failure mode channels continuously.
Threshold-based gas concentration. One failure mode channel.
Critical gap
Detects assets degrading within normal parameters that will fail under load surge or extreme weather
Does not flag assets performing within gas thresholds. The most dangerous failures look fine until they fail.
Weather and load
Accounts for ambient temperature, solar load, wind, humidity, and load variation at every monitoring interval
No weather or load correction. Environmental variation drives false alarms.
Human interpretation
Autonomous. No analyst required. Alerts are actionable directly.
Requires domain expert assessment. High false alarm rate demands ongoing expert attention.
Cost to cover 500 assets
Fleet-wide deployment, one platform.
Up to $15M in hardware alone, plus $500 to $1,500 per unit per year in maintenance
Lab DGA integration
Every lab result feeds back into VIE. Prediction accuracy compounds with each additional data point.
No model updates. Does not learn from lab results, MEGGER readings, or field observations.
Ready to See It?
The failure signatures are already there. VIE finds them months before they become failures.
VIE is deployed today across 800+ transformers globally, from 500 kVA dry-types to 500+ MVA. One sensor failure and 99.99% gateway reliability since launch.