September 14-16, a scientific and practical event Power Transformers: Manufacturing, Operation, Diagnostics & Maintenance, organized by Public Council of Diagnostics Specialists of Power Electrical Equipment under auspices of ITC Uralenergoengineering and SVEL Group, held in Yekaterinburg.
The conference was attended by over 130 specialists of the electrical engineering, including experts representing the manufacturing, grids and generating companies, industrial companies and scientific organizations. Both Russian and foreign companies that manufacture measuring and testing equipment took part in the September event.
First two days were devoted to presenting and discussing 36 reports, exploring scientific and technical issues related to manufacturing, operation, diagnosis and maintenance of power transformers, and products presentations by manufacturers of power, instrument transformers, bushings, OLTCs and diagnostic equipment.
During the sessions, the delegates discussed the outputs of CIGRE’s international working teams activity, and trends in equipment diagnosis and operation, as well as failure statistics of transformer components. The participants presented results of the latest Russian developments applying new techniques and devices for electrical equipment evaluation.
Representatives of Kazan and Novosibirsk Universities, VEI (Russian Electrotechnical Institute, VNIITF Affiliate) and Technicheskaya Inspektsia of Russian Power Grids stressed that aging of electrical insulation is successful in Russia, i.e. transformer oil and insulating paper, along with the appropriate diagnostic methods and equipment.
During the event, many companies involved into diagnostics and monitoring had a chance to present the most advanced devices for equipment evaluation, which are more cost effective in comparison with their foreign alternatives. In particular, the oil surface tension analyzer, amplitude-frequency measuring unit, monitoring systems for transformer and other substation’s equipment, as well as UV Range Flaw Detector.
The conference also looked into optimizing the regulatory framework and announced the upcoming new standards, i.e., covering measurements of amplitude-frequency parameters of transformers. The manufacturers noted the existing focus on the increased share of exports - this applies not only to large manufacturers of transformers and components, which are already successfully promoting products on the global markets, but also manufacturers of diagnostics equipment.
Since the participants included representatives of end consumers (Rosseti, SUENCO, IDGC of the Urals, T Plus, Rushydro, and etc), their operational experience drove the dynamics and became the basis for constructive discussions. The final, third day of the conference was devoted to technical tours to SVEL Group’s sites. The participants visited all the company's sites: the production facilities of distribution, power and instruments transformers, reactors and substations, and viewed the modern production methods and practices.
Alexey Kishko, CEO, SVEL Group, underlined the importance of returning the business activity to offline and added that the industry longed for such face-to-face events
Alexey Utepov, Chairman, Public Council of Diagnostic Specialists, also stated the significance of the event, stressing that diagnostics of the aging equipment fleet is one of the essential tasks for improving reliability of power grids. And only upon putting heads together, both manufacturers and transformer operators, can ensure stable and trouble-free operation and, in general, drive electrical engineering development.
