by Dinesh Segaran – Infrastructure Services Engineer
This week I was given the opportunity to help present at their latest event: “Dry-type vs. Oil-filled Transformers: Horses for Courses”, where Jeff Brown (Transformer Manufacturing Company), Chris Odendaal (AusNet Services) and I discussed and debated the benefits and drawbacks of each technology.
As the event title suggests, the choice of transformer type is very much application dependent. Broadly speaking, smaller transformers (Low voltage and some Medium voltage transformers) are more suited to dry-type, while larger transformers (Medium to High Voltage transformers) lend themselves better to oil-filled transformers.
There is a clear intermediate zone where dry and oil filled transformers could both be suitable, which provided plenty of discussion amongst the audience and the panel. Issues such as unit size, transportability, cost across the asset lifetime, maintenance requirements were all brought up and discussed.
There is wide experience in this field across the industry with various relevant applications, ranging from high powered, high voltage transmission transformers to household appliances and everything in between.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to be included in this forum, learnt a lot and thoroughly enjoyed the experience to boot.
EESA (Electric Engineers Society Australia) is a not-for-profit Technical Society of Engineers Australia (EA), established to advance interest in the field of electric energy. The key objective of EESA is to provide a continuous professional development program to our members.