How IoT Supports Health Condition Monitoring of Distribution Transformer

The transformer is an important asset for people performing distribution and transmission of power supply to run their daily activities. The demand for constant, reliable, and quality power supply is increasing due to the evolution of more and more renewables, Electric Vehicles, and electronic device usage. To support the abundant power supply, distribution transformers have to give the consistent performance of transmitting the power system.

Hence the distribution transformer is smartly monitored by enabling the IoT monitoring system to check its operational conditions in real-time. A large number of transformers in wide areas can be monitored by an IoT condition monitoring system.

What is IoT Condition Monitoring System?

Condition Monitoring is a new approach followed in various industries for effective equipment maintenance. It helps technicians to detect any functionality issues, precise measure, and store data easily. Gathering a huge amount of informational data has become easy with conditional monitoring systems.

Whereas the Internet of Things(IoT) uses smart sensors, trackers, and conditional data communications from connected devices. It supports every technician to perform operations and access data conveniently from anywhere, anytime using their smartphones or laptops. It sends an alert notification to the responsible technicians immediately after predicting any crisis in heavy equipment or operational system.

Why IoT for Distribution Transformer?

It is reported that every year around 15-18% of distribution transformers are expected to fail.  The major reasons for transformer failures can be insulation problems, moisture ingress, oil contamination, overloading, and manufacturing defects. Using a condition monitoring system in the transformer, it is easy to process acquisition and collect various parameters of data to predict and prevent transform failures. IoT-based transformer health condition monitoring system will support proactive maintenance and monitoring effectively.

Manual monitoring and data collection have various challenges like,

• Need for maintenance staff to monitor the assets collecting various parameter data.
• Collecting all parameter data manually is difficult for technicians.
• Inaccuracy in data collected due to human errors.
• It cannot support continuous data collection in real-time.

Compared to manual monitoring the IoT-based remote monitoring platform containing readily available sensors and cloud infrastructure can help to address all these challenges both technically and economically.

The distribution transformer empowered with an IoT platform can monitor and measure parameters like temperature and different gas detection. By installing an Arduino micro controller and sensors on the distribution transformer the faults such as the condition of transmission oil exceeding the permissible range, electrical faults, thermal fault, or overheating oil are detected instantly in real-time.

The Distribution Transformer IoT Monitoring system is built in a way to collect various vital parameters of transformers like oil level, oil temperature, winding temperature, currents, voltage, humidity, etc are gathered and sent to the cloud through the internet. End users can get this data in the form of an application dashboard showing all the parameters in real-time. It may also include an analytical feature to diagnose failures and provide solutions proactively. It supports push notifications and alert messages or emails during any abnormality in the system.

Benefits of Distribution Transformer IoT Monitoring Solution:

• Approaching IoT is easy. Since it is a simple software-oriented architecture used in real-time.
• Mode – It is an automatic monitoring process giving access to various users from different locations.
• Digitized data transmission and storage.
• Any number of users can monitor assets transparently from anywhere.
• Cost & failure of the transformer are low.
• Easy up-gradation and scalability.
• Preventive maintenance cost is decreased.
• Increase in revenue as a reduction in failure costs.

IoT-based remote monitoring solution for distribution transformers provides an easy and inexpensive way to adapt a condition monitoring system in real-time to monitor the important asset of the power system. A healthy distribution transformer is necessary to provide a healthy power system. Trinetra Tense is a reliable IoT platform solution provider that has successful experience in implementing a health condition monitoring system on distribution transformers to maintain vital assets. Reach us to get a free demo and know our works based on the IoT platform.