Report on Repair for Performance Improvement of Distribution Transformer for MPPKVVCL
- About the Research
The high monetary value of a transformer has placed the transformer life-time optimization into the focus of asset management. Distribution Transformer (DT) is one of the critical and high CAPEX assets for DISCOMs. For overall DISCOM viability, it is important that each DT must turn into a profit centre. It is estimated that of 24% national average AT&C losses, at least 3-4%1 comes from Technical losses in DTs, and it can be brought down to 0.5% and below. Restructuring reforms like RAPDRP has envisaged utilities to carry out an energy audit of a DT for monitoring inherent losses (at least on a sampling basis). However, unfortunately, this keeps missing the attention, to the extent that DT technical losses are not even measured till it breaks down and only broken-down DTs are sent for repair. There is minimum to none pro-active approach to DT repair and O&M.
DT failure rate is one of the important KPI for Indian DISCOMs. The losses associated with DT failure are relatively higher in the Indian context compared to the global benchmark. In India, 12-15% DTs fail every year and average rate of failure of aluminium wound DTs is more than copper wound DTs. Overloading is one of the root causes of DT failure. DTs are ~30-40% frequently overloaded than their actual capacity resulting in deterioration oftheir operating efficiency and eventually its lifespan.
Any failure of the DT before the expiration of its designed lifespan results in an unplanned outage, production loss, unavailability of critical services and in most cases substantial financial losses to both utilities and customers. Overall, it affects the reliability of the network.