Modeling of the Winding Hot-Spot Temperature in Power Transformers: Case Study of the Low-Loaded Fleet

Abstract

A proposal of the dynamic thermal rating (DTR) applied and optimized for low-loaded power transformers equipped with on-line hot-spot (HS) measuring systems is presented in the paper. The proposed method concerns the particular population of mid-voltage (MV) to high-voltage (HV) transformers, a case study of the population of over 1500 units with low average load is analyzed. Three representative real-life working units are selected for the method evaluation and verification. Temperatures used for analysis were measured continuously within two years with 1 h steps. Data from 2016 are used to train selected models based on various machine learning (ML) algorithms. Data from 2017 are used to verify the trained models and to validate the method. Accuracy analysis of all applied ML algorithms is discussed and compared to the conventional thermal model. As a result, the best accuracy of the prediction of HS temperatures is yielded by a generalized linear model (GLM) with mean prediction error below 0.71% for winding HS. The proposed method may be implemented as a part of the technical assessment decision support systems and freely adopted for other electrical power apparatus after relevant data are provided for the learning process and as predictors for trained models.

Keywords

• power transformers
• condition assessment
• online monitoring
• temperature