Preventing Explosions and Sudden Breakdowns of Oil Filled Power Transformers by Packed Advance Oil Testing

摘要

Power transformer is critical electrical equipment in any electrical network, which is used for power transmission and distribution. Power transformer is static electrical equipment that can live for relatively long ages (25 years average) therefore it should be manufactured from high quality material and accurate design which will be costly (based on its size) and will take long for manufacturing and it is not shelf item. ADGAS electrical network has around 80 power transformers that supplies different voltage levels from 415 V to 33 KV. Although transformers are reliable equipment but there are three challenges for maintenance and operations teams that they can face with transformers. First, transformer cannot be dismantled easily to monitor its internal components and be proactive for any abnormality so it is hidden system. Second, even with reliable equipment there is possibility of faults and the consequences of transformer failure are massive as the consequences can be power loss, power redundancy loss, recovery time is significant, costly and has potential of explosion. Third, replacement decision is challenging as if the decision is only time based as the common practice (25 years) there is no guarantee that the transformer will fail before that period due to manufcuatirng issues/operational abnormalities/lack of maintenance, etc. Meanwhile; if transformers had proper operation and maintenance, then transformer can live much more than 25 years so replacement decision will be not efficient from cost wise. Therefore ADGAS electrical team is developing applying the best practices of transformer condition monitoring analysis and trending which will significantly enhance the safety, reliability and availability of electrical transformers. Applying condition monitoring will maintain the safety culture of ADNOC and meets with ADNOC four pillars as it will be described in details. The paper will start with simple definition for power transformer, discussing the potential hazards of transformers with accidents case studies. Then the paper will illustrate the existing solutions of controlling the hazards which is protection system and replacing old transformers. Then condition monitoring tools and results will be discussed thoughly and then the paper will conclude the project and shows its advantage and its role in applying ADNOC four pillars.