The digital pact

© magnorbertfotografus.hu

The E.ON Hungária Group has opened a ful­ly auto­mat­ed trans­former sta­tion in Budapest and wants to dig­i­tal­ize its entire trans­former fleet step by step. The com­pa­ny is rely­ing on trans­former man­u­fac­tur­er GANZ Trans­form­ers and Elec­tric Rotat­ing Machines Ltd, which is using MR’s intel­li­gent solu­tions.


If you want to take a look into the future of the Hun­gar­i­an elec­tric­i­ty grid, you can do so in the Őrmező dis­trict of Budapest. The E.ON Hungária Group opened a ful­ly auto­mat­ed sub­sta­tion there in Sep­tem­ber 2024, which will sup­ply around 22,000 cus­tomers with elec­tric­i­ty and will also cov­er the needs of new­ly relo­cat­ed indus­tri­al cus­tomers and a planned hos­pi­tal in the future. Sán­dor Farkas, grid tech­nol­o­gy senior expert at the E.ON Hungária Group, explains: “In order to ensure ener­gy secu­ri­ty in the future, we are invest­ing heav­i­ly in the mod­ern­iza­tion and expan­sion of the grids. The Őrmező sub­sta­tion is a good exam­ple of this.”

Smart: The intel­li­gent solu­tion from GANZ is based on the know-how of MR.

Invest­ments like these are urgent­ly need­ed. In Budapest alone, almost half of the trans­former sta­tions are already oper­at­ing at 80 per­cent capac­i­ty, and in some cas­es even 100 per­cent. And accord­ing to esti­mates by the Hun­gar­i­an Min­istry of Ener­gy, the country’s elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion will increase from the cur­rent 44 ter­awatt hours (TWh) to almost 60 in 2030. “In Hun­gary, we are in a process of rein­dus­tri­al­iza­tion. New bat­tery fac­to­ries are being planned and the auto­mo­tive indus­try also wants to invest heav­i­ly. These are typ­i­cal sec­tors with high elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion,” explains Sán­dor Farkas.

Demand from pri­vate con­sumers will also rise steadi­ly in the com­ing years as the num­ber of elec­tric cars increas­es and more and more house­holds install heat pumps or split air con­di­tion­ing sys­tems. Not to men­tion the chal­lenges for the grids posed by the inte­gra­tion of renew­able ener­gies, the share of which is also grow­ing. “This is a major task for the E.ON Hungária Group, as we sup­ply elec­tric­i­ty to 3.2 mil­lion house­holds, more than half of the coun­try,” says Sán­dor Farkas.

“We devel­oped a cus­tomized pack­age of intel­li­gent solu­tions for the trans­form­ers, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly improves the oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy and uti­liza­tion of the plant.”

Gábor Farkas, Brand Man­ag­er of GANZ Intel­li­gent Solu­tions at GANZ Trans­form­ers and Elec­tric Rotat­ing Machines Ltd.

The Automated Substation

With the Őrmező sub­sta­tion, the E.ON Hungária Group has there­fore laid an impor­tant foun­da­tion for mak­ing its grid fit for the future. At the heart of the sys­tem are two dig­i­tal­ized trans­form­ers from the Hun­gar­i­an man­u­fac­tur­er GANZ Trans­form­ers and Elec­tric Rotat­ing Machines Ltd. Brand Man­ag­er of GANZ Intel­li­gent Solu­tions Gábor Farkas, who is respon­si­ble for dig­i­tal solu­tions at the trans­former, explains: “We devel­oped a tai­lor-made pack­age of intel­li­gent solu­tions for the trans­form­ers. The main objec­tive was to pro­vide an eas­i­ly acces­si­ble sys­tem that sig­nif­i­cant­ly improves the oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy and uti­liza­tion of the plant.”

The solu­tion includes a DGA sen­sor for the analy­sis of dis­solved gas­es in trans­former oil, direct tem­per­a­ture mea­sure­ment with fiber optic sen­sors for the wind­ing sec­tion, intel­li­gent cool­ing sys­tem con­trol and mon­i­tor­ing of cool­ing effi­cien­cy, vibroa­coustic tap chang­er mon­i­tor­ing with self-learn­ing algo­rithm, online exe­cu­tion mon­i­tor­ing and oth­er func­tions.

Facts & Figures E.ON Hungária Group:

The E.ON Hungária Group, a sub­sidiary of the Ger­man E.ON Group, sup­plies elec­tric­i­ty to Trans­danu­bia, Budapest and Pest Coun­ty and is one of three dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem oper­a­tors in Hun­gary along­side the MVM Group and OPUSZ-TITÁSZ Zrt.

3,2

million

cus­tomers are sup­plied with elec­tric­i­ty by the ener­gy com­pa­ny.

Distribution System Operators in Hungary

83.610

kilometers

is the length of the elec­tric­i­ty grid man­aged by the E.ON Hungária Group.

The high­light: the data col­lect­ed dur­ing oper­a­tion enables a so-called dig­i­tal twin of the trans­former, which can be used to derive spe­cif­ic deci­sions and mea­sures based on the oper­at­ing data. This is the first time that this tech­nol­o­gy has been used in Hun­gary. “The dig­i­tal twin can be used to sim­u­late poten­tial over­load sce­nar­ios, for exam­ple. This allows the oper­a­tor to assess the impact of crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions in advance,” says Gábor Farkas about the ben­e­fits.

Cooperation with MR

In order to offer solu­tions like these, GANZ was one of the first cus­tomers to enter into a dig­i­tal­iza­tion part­ner­ship with MR three years ago. The result of this joint effort is now known as GANZ Intel­li­gent Solu­tions. The basis for this is ETOS® and the under­ly­ing ISM® platform–an open sys­tem solu­tion for the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of pow­er trans­form­ers devel­oped by MR and spe­cial­ly adapt­ed to the needs of GANZ.

“Thanks to the intel­li­gent solu­tion, our pow­er trans­form­ers can be oper­at­ed with a high­er degree of uti­liza­tion and have a longer ser­vice life,” says Gábor Farkas. The long-estab­lished Hun­gar­i­an com­pa­ny has already deliv­ered around 60 intel­li­gent trans­form­ers, and over 95 per­cent of its total pro­duc­tion is now equipped with dig­i­tal­iza­tion solu­tions. “The col­lab­o­ra­tion with MR has brought us clos­er to our goal of devel­op­ing from a prod­uct sup­pli­er to a solu­tion provider,” explains Gábor Farkas.

Prac­ti­cal: The col­lect­ed trans­former data can be read out direct­ly on site or con­ve­nient­ly from the office via a lap­top.

Into The Digital Future with Retrofits

Sán­dor Farkas is very sat­is­fied with the GANZ solu­tion: “The pos­si­bil­i­ties offered by the GANZ sys­tem are very promis­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, the load mon­i­tor­ing and, of course, the fact that every autho­rized per­son can access the trans­former data con­ve­nient­ly from the office via their lap­top, offers con­sid­er­able advan­tages.” But the sub­sta­tion in Őrmező is just the begin­ning. Step by step, the E.ON Hungária Group wants to dig­i­tal­ize its entire trans­former fleet.

“By merg­ing our sub­sidiaries North and South Trans­danu­bia with the elec­tric­i­ty sup­pli­er ELMÜ, the total num­ber of our trans­form­ers has risen from 200 to 300 in just a few years. And accord­ing to our fore­cast, the num­ber will increase to around 400 by the end of this decade. This nat­u­ral­ly makes oper­a­tions more com­plex,” says Sán­dor Farkas. By dig­i­tal­iz­ing this equip­ment, he hopes not only to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of its tech­ni­cal con­di­tion, but also to expand the pos­si­bil­i­ties for man­ag­ing the entire trans­former fleet. More­over, there is no way around dig­i­tal­iza­tion for per­son­nel rea­sons alone: “We do have our own diag­nos­tics depart­ment, but its capac­i­ty is lim­it­ed,” says Sán­dor Farkas.

“The pos­si­bil­i­ties offered by the GANZ sys­tem are very promis­ing. Load mon­i­tor­ing in par­tic­u­lar offers con­sid­er­able advan­tages.”

Sán­dor Farkas, grid tech­nol­o­gy senior expert at the E.ON Hungária Group

The grid expert there­fore ben­e­fits from the fact that GANZ also offers retro­fit solu­tions thanks to its coop­er­a­tion with MR: “We always have to weigh up oper­at­ing and invest­ment costs. And we can see that the prices for trans­form­ers have rough­ly dou­bled in the last three years.” Gábor Farkas at GANZ also con­firms this and adds: “In addi­tion, the devel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion and com­mis­sion­ing of trans­form­ers can take sev­er­al years. In con­trast, prices for mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems have fall­en and their lead times are only a few months.”

The trans­former man­u­fac­tur­er expects inter­est in dig­i­tal­iza­tion to con­tin­ue to grow and has there­fore recent­ly launched a new solu­tion on the mar­ket, the GANZ Expert Sys­tem, which takes fleet man­age­ment to a high­er lev­el. “The new Expert Sys­tem pro­vides asset man­age­ment with even more pre­cise infor­ma­tion about the con­di­tion of the equip­ment and at the same time pro­vides rec­om­men­da­tions for action for the entire con­nect­ed trans­former fleet,” says Gábor Farkas. With this solu­tion, oper­a­tors such as the E.ON Hungária Group can pre­pare even bet­ter for the chal­lenges of the future.

Reinhausen Inside

Maschi­nen­fab­rik Rein­hausen sup­ports OEMs in the imple­men­ta­tion of dig­i­tal­iza­tion projects and has its own team for this pur­pose, which also takes care of engi­neer­ing, design and process design. With the ETOS® automa­tion solu­tion, MR offers an open, man­u­fac­tur­er-inde­pen­dent key tech­nol­o­gy for the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of pow­er trans­form­ers, which the coop­er­a­tion part­ners can mar­ket under their own name.

These are the most important customer benefits of the cooperation:
  • Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion from the com­pe­ti­tion through pro­pri­etary intel­li­gent trans­former solu­tions
  • Bet­ter inte­gra­tion of mon­i­tor­ing func­tions and sen­sors from the same man­u­fac­tur­er
  • Sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of process­es when han­dling con­trol cab­i­nets.

YOUR CONTACT PERSON

Inter­est­ed in a coop­er­a­tion?
Oktay Akkas, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­age at MR is there for you:
O.Akkas@reinhausen.com


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