Smart asset management of aging devices in energy systems: A case study of transformers

Abstract

Transformers are often the most valuable and indispensible asset in a substation and failures would result in undesirable disturbances and economic losses to energy systems. In order to prevent failures, the common practice in the industry is to monitor the condition of all transformers uniformly and routinely irrespective of the vulnerability of an individual transformer. Since transformers with higher operation years and greater loading condition will deteriorate more, the condition monitoring and maintenance activities should be adjusted taken into account these effects. This paper proposes a smart asset management tool which can be used to prioritize the monitoring and maintenance activities of transformers and to predict a transformer condition state. Such a tool can be useful for the industry to forecast the condition of transformers and to decide when and how to alter the present maintenance policy. © 2011 IEEE.