Asset management through effective transformer diagnostics & condition monitoring

Abstract

Power transformers are the most critical and important equipment in the power sector. It links power generation, transmission and distribution. There is a huge investment required to acquire or replace them and when they fail, huge losses are incurred in terms of assets, revenue and customer good will. This huge financial burden due to sudden losses of power transformers can be minimized through effective condition monitoring and diagnostics. This paper presents a computer program developed to interpret the condition of power transformers by the analyzing the dissolved gases. The computer program developed using C-Sharp (C#) language under WINDOWS operating system is used to assess four different methods of Dissolved Gas Analysis (DGA) technique to predict the condition of the transformer so as to improve the accuracy of the interpretation. The result shows an increase in the fault-analysis classification of these DGA methods by up to 20%.