Highpoint Solutions is a specialist thermal imaging company delivering thermographic inspection services to theme park operators throughout Australia.
Amusement parks are an unusually demanding electrical environment, and they illustrate the case for infrared inspection better than almost any other site type.
Why the site is difficult
A theme park combines several problems that individually complicate electrical maintenance and together make conventional inspection nearly impossible during the season:
- Ride availability is the business. A ride out of service on a Saturday is lost revenue and disappointed visitors, so unplanned downtime is expensive in a way that is immediately visible.
- The load pattern is brutal. Drives, motors and braking systems cycle constantly through the operating day — high starting currents, repeated thermal cycling, and mechanical vibration transmitted into terminations.
- Equipment is distributed and exposed. Boards sit in plant rooms, at ride bases, outdoors, and in enclosures subject to heat, dust and moisture.
- Safety scrutiny is high. Rides carry the public, so electrical integrity is a compliance matter as much as a maintenance one.
- The maintenance window is narrow. Shutdown periods are short, scheduled far ahead, and already full.
Why thermography fits
The inspection happens with the plant running.
That is not a convenience — it is a technical requirement. A loose or degraded connection only generates heat when current is flowing through it. Inspect a ride during a shutdown, with everything isolated, and a serious fault will read completely normal.
Surveying during operating conditions means the equipment is inspected in the state that produces the fault. Boards must be live and carrying at least 40% of normal load for the survey to be meaningful, and on an operating ride that condition takes care of itself.
The practical consequence is that rides keep running while the survey happens. Covers are removed and refitted by the site's electrical staff, the thermographer works from outside the arc flash boundary, and no ride comes out of service for the inspection itself.
What gets surveyed
On a park site the scope typically covers:
- Main switchboards and distribution boards, including ride-base boards
- Motor control centres, variable speed drives and soft starters
- Braking and control systems
- Lighting and effects distribution
- Plant rooms — pumps, compressors, refrigeration and water treatment
- Food and beverage tenancy boards, which are high-load and frequently altered
What comes out of it
Every anomaly is measured against a reference component doing identical work — phase against phase, drive against identical drive — and classified with a repair timeframe:
| Priority | ΔT vs reference | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Critical | > 30 °C | Serious abnormality. Immediate repair recommended — failure may be imminent. |
| 2 — Significant | 20 – 30 °C | Should be corrected — could fail suddenly. Repair within one week. |
| 3 — Caution | 10 – 20 °C | Minor problem. Rectify when convenient, then re-inspect for the trend. |
| 4 — Checked | < 10 °C | No abnormality at inspection. Re-inspect at regular intervals. |
Anything serious is raised with the site contact on the day rather than held for the report. The written report follows within 24 hours, naming the board, the component and the terminal — so a maintenance team opens one connection during the next scheduled window rather than pulling apart a panel on a hunch.
Why it pays on this site type
Repeated surveys are where the value compounds. A connection that warms year on year is a scheduled repair booked into a planned shutdown. The same connection found at failure is a ride down on a public holiday.
Airborne ultrasound runs alongside the infrared survey on most park sites, because it hears what infrared cannot see — arcing and tracking on switchgear, and bearing and lubrication faults on the drives and gearboxes that move the rides.
If you want to price that trade-off against your own downtime figures, the cost of late detection calculator does exactly that. For the method itself, see the electrical thermography page.