“We have left out everything that is not absolutely necessary.”

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Why did MR develop the VACUTAP® VI? 

We want­ed to devel­op an effi­cient on-load tap-chang­er that specif­i­cal­ly meets the cur­rent and future require­ments of net­work oper­a­tion. In urban areas in par­tic­u­lar, space for trans­form­ers in sub­sta­tions is lim­it­ed and com­pact designs are there­fore in demand. At the same time, how­ev­er, the require­ments in net­work oper­a­tion are increas­ing and sus­tain­abil­i­ty aspects in pro­duc­tion and oper­a­tion are also play­ing an increas­ing­ly impor­tant role. Nev­er­the­less, trans­form­ers must remain afford­able. When devel­op­ing the VACUTAP® VI, we involved OEMs from the out­set and dis­cussed our con­cept ideas with them so that we could opti­mal­ly meet the require­ments in this pow­er seg­ment and real­ize sys­tem cost ben­e­fits for our cus­tomers. We have left out every­thing that is not absolute­ly nec­es­sary which enables man­u­fac­tur­ers to build very com­pact trans­form­ers and opti­mize their CO_² foot­print by using less mate­r­i­al. And this tap-chang­er is not only suit­able for new trans­form­ers. Oper­a­tors can also use it to replace con­ven­tion­al oil-based tap-chang­ers as part of a retro­fit. 

What was special about the development? 

The biggest chal­lenge was com­bin­ing a com­plete­ly new on-load tap-chang­er con­cept with a com­plete­ly new dri­ve con­cept. This was com­plex because numer­ous dis­ci­plines had to be brought togeth­er, from clas­sic devel­op­ment design to dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy and soft­ware pro­gram­ming. Thanks to our expe­ri­enced teams in the respec­tive areas and the use of sys­tem sim­u­la­tions, we suc­ceed­ed in cre­at­ing a tru­ly inno­v­a­tive and future-ori­ent­ed solu­tion in five years of inten­sive devel­op­ment work. 

In the VACUTAP® VI, we have left out every­thing that is not absolute­ly nec­es­sary which enables man­u­fac­tur­ers to build very com­pact trans­form­ers and opti­mize their CO_² foot­print by using less mate­r­i­al. And this tap-chang­er is not only suit­able for new trans­form­ers. Oper­a­tors can also use it to replace con­ven­tion­al oil-based tap-chang­ers as part of a retro­fit. .

How did you prepare the new tap-changer for practical use? 

We have incor­po­rat­ed the in-depth knowl­edge that we have gath­ered over the years in the areas of vac­u­um and dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy into this new tap-chang­er con­cept, and cus­tomer feed­back from thou­sands of appli­ca­tions has also been tak­en into account. In addi­tion, in our test lab­o­ra­to­ry we have sub­ject­ed the VACUTAP® VI to the tough­est tests – which go beyond the required stan­dards – to prove that it can with­stand even extreme net­work con­di­tions. What’s more, the tap-chang­er has already been used in real net­work oper­a­tion by sev­er­al pilot cus­tomers. We have left noth­ing to chance!