Abstract
Power transformers are important equipment of the electrical switchyard whose failure leads to long hours of outage. In this research, a two-stage hybridized model for determining the lifespan of power transformers is presented by using the furan content to determine the Degree of Polymerisation (DP) of transformer. For a ‘virgin’ transformer, the furan content was about 0.01ppm while a transformer with about 10ppm was within its end of useful life. 2-Furaldehyde (2FAL) content values of 0.01ppm and 10ppm correspond to DP values of approximately 1200 and 250, respectively. These parameters were used in developing a DP model using Jacobi and Gauss Seidel numerical analysis iterative techniques. The techniques were implemented in Matrix Laboratory 8.2 (R2013b) environment. The second stage involved the hybridisation of the developed DP model with another rate constant model adopted from Arrhenius. This stage was also implemented in Matrix Laboratory 8.2 (R2013b) environment. The life span of the transformer was determined by adding the service age at any point in time to the remaining lifetime at that point. A GUI of the hybridised model was developed using SIMULINK blocks. The developed model yielded a DP range of 247 ≤ DP ≤ 1184. Factors such as the hotspot temperature, activation energy and pre-exponential factor were useful for the determination of lifespan.Keywords: Degree of Polymerization, Furan Content, Life Expectancy, Power Transformer
Highlights
Power Transformer is a core ingredient for ensuring reliable and efficient electricity supply
Studies conducted revealed that most power transformer installed in Nigeria had been in existence since 60’s and this indicate that most transformers had been operating for more than 50 years
The consequences are notably reflected in the quality of service delivered by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) coupled with erratic power supply, power outage, load shedding, black-out and these significantly affect the socioeconomic development of the country
Summary
Power Transformer is a core ingredient for ensuring reliable and efficient electricity supply. In order to bridge the gap between energy supply and demand and ensure optimal performance of the installed power transformers, there is need for regular assessment of insulation condition within high power transformers. Studies conducted revealed that most power transformer installed in Nigeria had been in existence since 60’s and this indicate that most transformers had been operating for more than 50 years. This is in contrary to the expected lifetime of 20-40 years as stated by the manufacturers. Petru et al (Notingher et al, 2017) further proposed a novel model to estimate the remaining lifetime of an in-service power transformer based on monitoring of its oil resistivity. A hybrid mathematical models are formulated to predict the life span of power transformer
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