Abstract
Fire and explosion accidents of oil-filled electrical transformers are leading to negative impacts, not only on the delivery of energy, but also on workplace health and safety as well as the surrounding environment. Such accidents are still being reported, regardless of applying the regular maintenance strategy in the power plants. The purpose of this paper is to integrate a sustainability perspective into the maintenance strategy. The problem addressed is: how can we approach the relevant cost-effective sustainable maintenance for oil-filled electrical transformers? For this purpose, an empirical study in a power plant in Kuwait was introduced. The first stage was to carry out a sustainability assessment using the ABCD procedure. In this procedure, gaps to approach sustainability were identified and actions prioritized to close these gaps were demonstrated. Applying this procedure yielded an early fault diagnosis (EFD) model for achieving cost-effective sustainable maintenance using a fault trend chart based on a novel numerical method. Implementing this model resulted in an extension of the lifetime of transformers with suspected failure propagation, leading to a deferral of the replacement investment costs. The principal conclusion of this paper is the importance of viewing the maintenance strategy of transformers from a strategic sustainability perspective, in order to approach relevant cost-effective sustainable maintenance.
Highlights
The basic components of an oil-filled electrical transformer are copper windings and an iron core
The principal conclusion of this paper is the importance of viewing the maintenance strategy of transformers from a strategic sustainability perspective, in order to approach relevant cost-effective sustainable maintenance
This was proven in the empirical study by detecting the faults in the initial stage using the early fault diagnosis (EFD) model
Summary
The basic components of an oil-filled electrical transformer are copper windings and an iron core. Overheating of the insulating oil in-service can occur due to increased current load, oxidation, and corrosion deposits on windings, or unexpected electrical and mechanical faults resulting in the formation of partial discharge (corona) and arcing phenomena, which in turn can generate flammable gases. The energy in these phenomena can be very high and develop temperatures in hundreds of degrees, though for a short time, causing fire and explosion accidents [2,3,4,5]. These accidents occurred regardless of using the regular maintenance strategy during the transformer’s useful life [2,10]
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