Travel The Future

At TRANSFORM in Hong Kong, Rein­hausen pre­sent­ed tech­nolo­gies for the chal­lenges of tomor­row.

The Unit­ed Nations pre­dicts that around 68 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion will live in cities by 2050, and the num­ber liv­ing in megac­i­ties will con­tin­ue to rise. So how will this affect the pow­er grids and equip­ment of the future? Rein­hausen has joined forces with oth­er pre­mi­um sup­pli­ers to answer that very ques­tion, pre­sent­ing their find­ings at the TRANSFORM 2019 exhi­bi­tion in Hong Kong.

In the inno­va­tion lab, the expert audi­ence mar­veled at a design study pro­vid­ing a glimpse into the future of trans­form­ers. (© Geof­frey Cheng)

Seven Solutions For More Energy

With more and more peo­ple pour­ing into cities, pow­er grids are increas­ing­ly being pushed to their lim­its. Here, we show you the chal­lenges that this brings and how inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts from the Rein­hausen Group can help to over­come them.

1. challenge: More cabling required

Although ener­gy require­ments and demands on trans­mis­sion capac­i­ty are soar­ing, space in cities is lim­it­ed. In light of this, installing more cabling is the only way to meet the increas­ing demands for ener­gy.

The solution: Mobile testing systems

Com­mis­sion­ing tests will become more impor­tant as a result. With the help of HIGHVOLT’s mobile test­ing sys­tems, pow­er trans­form­ers, high-volt­age cables, and gas-insu­lat­ed switchgears will go into oper­a­tion safe­ly. When the sys­tems are up and run­ning, the HiRES Dynam­ic Event Indi­ca­tor (DEI) helps to iden­ti­fy dynam­ic events in net­work equip­ment.

2. Challenge: New sources of energy

The num­ber of elec­tric vehi­cles and the pro­por­tion of ener­gy gen­er­at­ed by renew­able sources are set to rise even fur­ther in the future, putting increas­ing strain on pow­er grids.

The solution: An intelligent network management system

What can you do when grids become more volatile due to the use of renew­able ener­gies? Rein­hausen has teamed up with PSI Soft­ware AG to devel­op a solu­tion for con­trol sys­tems. With this solu­tion, oper­a­tors are able to dynam­i­cal­ly over­load trans­form­ers for the first time and safe­ly mobi­lize pre­vi­ous­ly untapped ther­mal reserves. This is based on sta­tus data from the trans­former as well as fore­cast­ed weath­er and load data.

3. Challenge: Intelligent transformers

The strain on grids is ris­ing as a result of increased ener­gy demand and insuf­fi­cient net­work expan­sion. Know­ing the transformer’s exact sta­tus is becom­ing more and more impor­tant, as it is the only way it can be con­trolled intel­li­gent­ly. How­ev­er, as dig­i­tal­iza­tion increas­es, so do fears about hack­ing.

The solution: Intelligent transformers

Through ETOS®—the Embed­ded Trans­former Oper­at­ing Sys­tem — Rein­hausen is pro­vid­ing an open, mod­u­lar sys­tem solu­tion for mon­i­tor­ing, con­trol­ling, reg­u­lat­ing, and dig­i­tal­iz­ing pow­er trans­form­ers. All the data col­lect­ed in the trans­former is ana­lyzed and eval­u­at­ed using intel­li­gent algo­rithms. IT secu­ri­ty was there­fore the top pri­or­i­ty even in the ear­ly stages of devel­op­ing ETOS®. The sys­tem pro­vides max­i­mum pro­tec­tion from exter­nal cyber attacks.

4. Challenge: Collecting data

It is becom­ing increas­ing­ly nec­es­sary to gath­er pre­cise infor­ma­tion about a piece of equipment’s cur­rent sta­tus, which is why more and more data is being request­ed.

The solution: Intelligent sensors

Intel­li­gent sen­sors and pro­tec­tive devices are need­ed to con­trol and mon­i­tor equip­ment. They pro­vide data that is vital for dig­i­tal­iza­tion and intel­li­gent con­trol, there­by enabling the equip­ment to be oper­at­ed smooth­ly. Rein­hausen pro­vides a broad port­fo­lio of sen­sors in the prod­ucts from its MESSKO sub­sidiary. For exam­ple, the MSENSE® DGA mon­i­tors the gas con­tent in oil, while the MESSKO® MTeC® EPT303 is a high­ly intel­li­gent solu­tion for con­trol­ling ven­ti­la­tion systems—both of which are essen­tial when oper­at­ing at over­load.

5. Challenge: Data aggregation

Grids are becom­ing increas­ing­ly com­plex and the amount of usable infor­ma­tion is ris­ing with each pass­ing day. Intel­li­gent con­trol and mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems are required to aggre­gate the data.

The solution: Fleet monitoring

The TESSA® FLEET MONITORING solu­tion devel­oped by Rein­hausen cre­ates a sta­tus dis­play out of the data col­lect­ed at the trans­former, so it is the per­fect intel­li­gent tool for mon­i­tor­ing all your equip­ment. Thanks to its real-time mon­i­tor­ing, grid oper­a­tors can extend main­te­nance inter­vals and reduce the num­ber of on-site sys­tem inspec­tions. With the ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem, oper­a­tors can inter­vene before a fault occurs, pre­vent­ing the need for cost­ly repairs.

6. Challenge: More power in a small space

Com­pact equip­ment with high pow­er out­put are play­ing an impor­tant role in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. In addi­tion, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion is an issue that is gain­ing in sig­nif­i­cance.

The solution: High-temperature tap-changers

Rein­hausen pro­vides high-tem­per­a­ture on-load tap-chang­ers and de-ener­gized tap-chang­ers, that get con­sid­er­ably bet­ter per­for­mance out of ester-filled trans­form­ers. High-tem­per­a­ture trans­form­ers are there­fore able to achieve the same per­for­mance with a reduced size, or high­er per­for­mance with the same size—making space-sav­ing solu­tions pos­si­ble even with increased ener­gy demands. In addi­tion, esters are an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly alter­na­tive to min­er­al oil and min­i­mize risks in the event of dam­age to the sys­tem.

7. Challenge: Aging equipment

The need to invest in the ener­gy grid is becom­ing more press­ing than ever before, but fund­ing for new equip­ment is lim­it­ed. Intel­li­gent aids help grid oper­a­tors decide how to spend their mon­ey wise­ly.

The solution: Fleet management

How is my trans­former fleet doing? To find out, you can use the man­u­fac­tur­er-inde­pen­dent TESSA® FLEETSCAN 2Dfleet man­age­ment solu­tion to iden­ti­fy crit­i­cal units at an ear­ly stage. The two-dimen­sion­al assess­ment matrix incor­po­rates, first­ly, the like­li­hood of func­tions fail­ing. The fail­ure risk index pro­vides impor­tant ref­er­ence points for the grid operator’s main­te­nance strat­e­gy. The sec­ond dimen­sion then con­sid­ers the loss-of-life and is impor­tant for mak­ing long-term invest­ment deci­sions.

Background information

These sev­en chal­lenges are based on the results of a study on megac­i­ties that was com­mis­sioned by Rein­hausen and its TRANSFORM part­ners. The study was car­ried out by the glob­al engi­neer­ing con­sult­ing firm P3. The aim was to find out which prob­lems and chal­lenges would arise from increased urban­iza­tion. To do this, P3 sur­veyed 39 experts from the ener­gy sec­tor.

YOUR CONTACT

Do you have any ques­tions about the trans­form­ers of the future?
Dr.-Ing. Mar­tin Wol­fram is hap­py to answer your queries:
M.Wolfram@reinhausen.com

Share with your network!

Never miss an issue again!

Click here to subscribe for free.