Wind Transformer Operations

• Summer Outage Season
• Annual oil samples during outage
• Significant power output fluctuations daily

Solar Transformer Operations

• Winter Outage Season
• Short outages can be taken at night
• Significant power output fluctuations daily

• Over-voltage due to fault conditions, load rejection and transients
• Mechanical, electrical and thermal stresses due to the loading cycles
• Increased partial discharge and hot spots due to gassing.
• Com bustible gases due to heating, harmonics

• Voltage fluctuations due to generator and step up function
• Sharp load fluctuations causing thermal stresses in insulation
• Low average loading with peak loading reaching 100 % for
  several days causing accelerated ageing of insulation
• Moisture and reduced maintenance leading to start up problems.

• Lock Wind Turbines
• Isolate and Add Air Break at Substation
• Several team members required to manually sample all transformers on site in one day
• Oil samples labelled in glass bottles spending the day in the sun
• Oil samples collected and sent to a lab possibly combined with other nearby sites (100’s in a shipment)
• Wait weeks to months to get results in PDF format
• Manual review and entry into Excel or MMS
• Separation of phases based on density while system is offline

Lab sampling provides significant repeatability concerns:

• Air ingression into samples
• Loss of volatiles during transportation
• Loss of volatiles for delays between sample and testing
• Sampling procedures
• Shift of dissolved to free gas
• Administrative errors from managing hundreds of samples

Generalized Application for Comparison Purposes

• Located in a farm field with no access restrictions
• No instrum ent power & com m unications available nearby
• Inadequate space for TM 1, TM 3, TM 8 type monitors
• Drain valve is locked in LV cabinet (typically 1”) – requires outage to access
• Monthly “inspections” at best
• Transformer costs 1/10thto 1/20th of the cost
• 1M VA to 5M VA, 660V / 34.5KV

• Drain valves are typically near the bottom of the Low Voltage Cabinet
• Transformer should be offline so installation usually tied to an outage
• Installed into the pad mount transformer drain valve typically 1” but can be 2” on larger transformers.
• Sensor has no power or communications wires so installation can take minutes per transformer.

• The gateway is adhered or fastened to the south side of a pad m ount transformer for highest sun exposure and limited snow build up.
• Mounting on weather towers or poles on site can increase distances (i.e30km at a 30m mounting height) vs the 600m to 1.5km range at 1m mounting height.
• Consider the site layout when selecting quantities of sensor, RF gateways and cellular gateways.

• Trend hydrogen, moisture, temperature
• Trend rate of change
• Configure alert thresholds
• Alert notifications via email
• Download data
• Geographic indicators
• Automated monthly report by site
• Accessible via Qualitrolcopr.com domain
• Data encrypted and stored on AWS
• API can be created to connect to SCADA etc.

• Interactive map view of transformer locations
• Green/Red indicator status on transformers

• Interactive Trend Analysis
• Hydrogen, Moisture, Temp Trending
• Date adjustment
• Hourly/Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Year Trends
• Alert Highlighting
• Rate of Change Trending
• Data Downloading

• Configurable Alerts Based onAlert Notification Emails (opt in function)
• Days without Data
• Maximum Absolute Values
• Rate of Change
• Alert Status
• Trigger Threshold
• Actual Values
• Time Stamp
• Activity Log and Notes

• Nameplate Information Stored For Maintenance Planning

• SSL/TLS encryption between browsers and the application
• Instruments 256 bit encrypted sensors
• SOC 2 Type 1 and 2 to be pursued when budget permits to support NERC consideration (keeping separate from customer systems until then)
• Companies will have the ability to soft delete data via tools within the application
• Permanently delete data via a manual request that will be executed outside of the application
• Not activated yet: Dual authentication and minimum password strength