A New Level of Power

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The life of a tap chang­er involves a lot of extremes: over­loads and over­volt­ages, fluc­tu­a­tions in the net­work, and many thou­sands of switch­ing oper­a­tions are all par for the course. The demands on the tap chang­er are huge, par­tic­u­lar­ly in indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions such as elec­tric arc trans­form­ers, but also in shunt reac­tors, phase shifters, HVDC trans­form­ers, and even in clas­sic net­work oper­a­tion. With its vac­u­um tech­nol­o­gy, the VACUTAP® VR is specif­i­cal­ly designed for extreme oper­at­ing con­di­tions such as these.

“We have increased the pow­er for the new gen­er­a­tion. With a step capac­i­ty of 6,000 kVA, the VACUTAP® VR is the most pow­er­ful vac­u­um on-load tap-chang­er around and is there­fore suit­able for appli­ca­tions in the extra-high-volt­age range,” says Port­fo­lio Man­ag­er Silke Schwarzwälder. The engi­neers have thought about the future in oth­er ways as well: By com­plete­ly redesign­ing the selec­tor range, they have been able to increase the tap-chang­ing capac­i­ty of the change-over selec­tor sig­nif­i­cant­ly and pro­vide high­er oper­at­ing and test­ing volt­ages. “We have designed the mod­u­lar poten­tial con­nec­tion con­cept so as to pro­vide trans­former man­u­fac­tur­ers with plan­ning cer­tain­ty when design­ing and con­struct­ing the tanks—regardless of whether or not this func­tion is required,” explains Schwarzwälder. The VACUTAP® VR is also suit­able for alter­na­tive insu­la­tion flu­ids.

“All of our exper­tise has gone into the new gen­er­a­tion.” Silke Schwarzwälder

Cost-effec­tive­ness was also a top pri­or­i­ty for the new gen­er­a­tion: 300,000 tap-change oper­a­tions can be car­ried out with­out main­te­nance and the divert­er switch insert only needs to be replaced after 1.2 mil­lion oper­a­tions. For appli­ca­tions with high num­bers of tap-change oper­a­tions, the Inter­rupter Exchange Mod­ule reduces pro­duc­tion breaks due to main­te­nance. “All of the exper­tise that we’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over the last 25 years in the field of vac­u­um tech­nol­o­gy has gone into the new gen­er­a­tion,” says Schwarzwälder.

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Find out more about the VACUTAP ® VR

s.schwarzwaelder@reinhausen.com