“We give transformers a longer life with individual components” 

BTRAC spe­cial­izes in trans­former acces­sories and is part of the Rein­hausen Group. Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Craig Car­ring­ton explains what prod­ucts and ser­vices the British com­pa­ny offers cus­tomers and how his team can help even when acces­sories are no longer avail­able on the mar­ket.


What transformer accessories does BTRAC offer? 

We have a wide range of porce­lain and sil­i­cone bush­ings for both indoor and out­door use, which are used in low and medi­um volt­age appli­ca­tions. This includes bush­ings that com­ply with British stan­dard norms and have been spe­cial­ly devel­oped for the UK mar­ket and oth­er coun­tries that oper­ate in line with these stan­dards. There are also oth­er acces­sories, such as cable box­es or epoxy resin mono-blocks. How­ev­er, cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic solu­tions and cus­tom-made prod­ucts are also impor­tant areas.

What are these solutions?

On the one hand, we adapt exist­ing prod­ucts to spe­cif­ic cus­tomer require­ments. For exam­ple, we can mod­i­fy CEDASPE’s SBC bush­ings by chang­ing the rod design or attach­ing dif­fer­ent ter­mi­na­tion arrange­ments. But we also devel­op com­plete­ly new bush­ing designs. And we can reverse engi­neer acces­sories that are no longer man­u­fac­tured. We have the appro­pri­ate soft­ware and a CNC machine that allows us to solve cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic prob­lems with flex­i­bil­i­ty and with­out long lead times. This means that retro­fits are also pos­si­ble where no stan­dard prod­ucts are available–giving trans­form­ers a longer life. 

„We can reverse engi­neer acces­sories that are no longer man­u­fac­tured.“

Craig Car­ring­ton, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of BTRAC

Do you have an example?

A porce­lain bush­ing broke at a customer’s premis­es and was par­tial­ly destroyed. How­ev­er, it could no longer be replaced because the man­u­fac­tur­er no longer exist­ed, and design draw­ings were also not avail­able. To change design would have meant a com­plete redesign of the sub­sta­tion at a huge cost to the cus­tomer. We car­ried out mea­sure­ments, cre­at­ed new draw­ings and recon­struct­ed the bush­ing. This gave the cus­tomer a new orig­i­nal part that can be rein­stalled to last for many years. With our BTRAC com­pa­ny founder Dave Fish­man, we have an expert on board who takes care of such com­pli­cat­ed cas­es. Few peo­ple in the world know as much about bush­ings as he does. This know-how is unique, and we nat­u­ral­ly make it avail­able to the entire Rein­hausen Group.

BTRAC has been part of the Reinhausen Group since 2016. What are the advantages of this?

In addi­tion to our own prod­ucts, we can offer the entire Rein­hausen port­fo­lio. From on-load tap-chang­ers to sen­sors, dehy­drat­ing breathers and pro­tec­tion devices from MESSKO. We have most of the goods in stock and can there­fore guar­an­tee short deliv­ery times. The advan­tage for cus­tomers: They get every­thing from a sin­gle source. We are also cer­ti­fied as a Pre­mi­um Ser­vice Provider by MR. Our four ser­vice tech­ni­cians car­ry out main­te­nance of on-load tap-chang­ers, and also take care of oth­er trans­former-relat­ed ser­vices.

Who are your customers? 

These are trans­former man­u­fac­tur­ers, ener­gy sup­pli­ers and ser­vice com­pa­nies in the UK and Ire­land. Cus­tomers who oper­ate solar and wind farms are also play­ing an increas­ing­ly impor­tant role. There are also trans­former man­u­fac­tur­ers from the Mid­dle East who, for his­tor­i­cal rea­sons, fol­low British stan­dards. So, we have a very large cus­tomer base.

How is the market developing? 

As in the rest of Europe, we are deal­ing with a rapid­ly grow­ing mar­ket. The UK gov­ern­ment wants to dras­ti­cal­ly reduce CO2 emis­sions and is there­fore invest­ing large sums in the expan­sion of the grids. The demand for trans­form­ers is enor­mous and the impor­tance of retro­fitting exist­ing equip­ment will con­tin­ue to increase in the future, as deliv­ery times are long, and fleets are aging. Our prod­ucts and solu­tions will there­fore be in high demand in the com­ing years.

Read more about our retro­fit solu­tions.

BTRAC at a Glance

BTRAC was found­ed in 2009 by Dave Fish­man (right) as a sis­ter com­pa­ny of CEDASPE, now also a mem­ber of the Rein­hausen Group. The com­pa­ny is based in Telford, which is con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed near Birm­ing­ham. Just last year, the com­pa­ny moved into a new, more mod­ern build­ing and now employs 18 peo­ple. Craig Car­ring­ton (left) start­ed his pro­fes­sion­al career at the age of 16, stud­ied elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and worked for many years at trans­former man­u­fac­tur­ers before join­ing BTRAC in 2016, where he built up the ser­vice busi­ness. He has been Man­ag­ing Direc­tor since 2020.


YOUR CONTACT PERSON

Do you have any ques­tions about BTRAC’s prod­ucts and ser­vices?
Craig Car­ring­ton is here for you:
c.carrington@uk.reinhausen.com


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