Forecasting of Power Transformer Life Loss Under Maintenance and Demand Side Management Scenarios

Power transformers performance has an impact on reliability of electric systems due to its importance and cost. Its performance can be derived from operation monitoring and its health condition. Health condition is frequently used to model transformer failure rate and to quantify the expected effects of actions like maintenance and demand management. Current models for assessing failure rate and expected useful life require simulation for the whole transformer life, which are computationally expensive and with results uncertain. In this paper, a new approach to analyze useful life of a transformer and its expected reliability performance is presented, resorting to health condition modelling, considering the application of maintenance and management of load profiles. The method shows advantages in quantifying the effects of maintenance and loading conditions as a strategy to extend useful life. The method is applied to a single transformer and the expected effects on reliability and useful life are listed.