March 2025: Delta-X Research at TechCon NA (Booth #2514) and the Doble Clients Conference

March 2025 was one of the busiest months of the conference season. Two of the most technically substantive events in the transformer asset management calendar fell within the same two-week window: TechCon NA from March 3–5, where Delta-X Research exhibited at Booth #2514, and the International Conference of Doble Clients from March 9–14. Both events drew the same core audience, senior technical professionals responsible for transformer testing, diagnostics, and maintenance programmes, and both generated substantive conversations on DGA methodology, fleet management, and online monitoring integration.

TechCon NA 2025: Booth #2514

TechCon NA is NETA's annual technical conference for electrical power testing professionals: engineers and technicians who carry out field testing, commissioning, and condition assessment on high-voltage equipment. The conference programme covers protection systems, cable diagnostics, transformer testing, and substation commissioning, but the transformer diagnostics sessions are consistently among the most heavily attended.

The questions that came up most consistently at Booth #2514 reflected the operational context of the TechCon audience.

Fleet-level risk ranking. Field testing professionals are often in the position of providing DGA interpretation results to utility asset managers who need to prioritise a portfolio of maintenance actions across a large transformer population. The question is not just "what does this result mean?" but "how does this unit compare to everything else in the fleet, and how urgent is it?" Transformer Oil Analyst™ (TOA) addresses this through the CSEV and HF metrics computed by R-DGA methodology [1], producing a ranked fleet view that places individual results in population context and a defensible priority list.

IEEE C57.104-2019 [2] provides the threshold-based condition classification that forms the basis of most utility DGA programmes. R-DGA adds to this by computing population-normalised severity metrics that capture the trajectory of gas accumulation across the transformer's full history, not just its current concentration levels. The combination gives testing professionals both the standard-referenced condition assessment and the quantitative severity ranking that threshold methods alone cannot provide.

Online monitoring and laboratory data integration. TechCon NA 2025 reflected a notable trend: increasing deployment of online DGA sensors on critical assets, and increasing uncertainty about how to integrate continuous sensor data with periodic laboratory sampling into a coherent analytical workflow. Monitor Watch provides the answer: a single R-DGA analysis framework applied consistently to both data types, with signal processing designed for online sensor characteristics before R-DGA calculations are run.

The Doble Clients Conference: March 9–14

The International Conference of Doble Clients is one of the oldest and most respected technical conferences in the power transformer field. Its history stretches back to the 1930s, and its proceedings, spanning more than 90 years, constitute one of the longest continuous technical records in transformer engineering. Jim Dukarm's early work on the statistical interpretation of transformer oil analysis [3], which became the foundation of R-DGA methodology, was first presented to the Doble technical community in the 1993 conference proceedings.

The Doble conference format is designed for depth. Sessions run longer and presentations go into more technical detail than at general utility industry events. The attendee group, including senior utility engineers, testing specialists, and transformer manufacturers, engages at a level that makes substantive methodological discussions possible. This is the conference where the difference between threshold-based and population-based DGA assessment can be debated with an audience that fully understands the statistical reasoning.

Key topics at the 2025 Doble conference included:

Multi-method diagnostic integration. IEEE C57.152-2013 [4] frames transformer condition assessment as a multi-method programme: DGA, oil quality testing, partial discharge measurement, frequency response analysis, power factor, and thermographic inspection each provide complementary information about different aspects of transformer condition. DGA is the continuous monitoring layer, and electrical testing methods provide deeper fault characterisation when DGA indicates a unit warrants closer examination. Conversations at the Doble conference often explore how these methods interact and when to escalate from DGA-based monitoring to a full diagnostic testing campaign.

Alternative insulating fluids and DGA. As utilities deploy more transformers filled with natural ester fluids for fire risk mitigation and environmental performance, the established DGA interpretation thresholds require adaptation. CIGRE TB 771 [5] addresses this specifically, and it was a topic of active discussion at the 2025 Doble conference given the increasing prevalence of ester-filled units in utility fleets. R-DGA methodology in TOA accommodates fluid type as a parameter, enabling appropriate interpretation for non-mineral-oil transformers.

The March Conferences in Context

The co-occurrence of TechCon NA and the Doble conference in the same two-week window in March creates an efficient concentration of technical engagement. The same fundamental questions, how to interpret DGA results reliably, how to prioritise fleet maintenance decisions, how to manage the transition to online monitoring, come up in both settings, but with different nuances that reflect the different professional contexts of NETA testing professionals and Doble's senior utility engineering audience.

For Delta-X Research, engaging across both communities in the same month provides a productive opportunity to hear how the same methodological questions land differently depending on the operational role of the person asking them.

If you attended either TechCon NA 2025 or the Doble Clients Conference and would like to continue any conversation from those events, contact us or reach out through our LinkedIn page.

For the technical foundations of R-DGA methodology, visit the Science page. For product details, see the TOA page and Monitor Watch page.