Plenary Lecture
Generator Power Transformer Wireless Thermal Management System
Professor Aleksandar Nikolic
Electrical Engineering Institute Nikola Tesla
University of Belgrade
Serbia
E-mail: anikolic@ieent.org
Abstract: Generator power transformer is the largest unit in power plants, since its capacity could goes up to 1400MVA. These transformers are very important for electric power system due to the fact that nowadays it should be wait more than two years for production of new generator transformer. That is reason why it is necessary to continuously supervise transformer operation. Thermal management is one of the essential approaches. Mostly spread method is based on calculating the transformer’s highest temperature (i.e. hot-spot temperature) using the measured transformer’s top oil temperature and load current. Although power plants are noisy industrial environments, a new solution based on wireless communication is proposed since cabling costs were too high due to complicated installation requirements. This system is used for thermal management of two generator transformers of 100MVA and 210MVA in the power plant and performs all measurements, hot-spot estimations, and transformer cooling system control (oil pumps and fans). Communication between system parts located on and near transformers and power-plant control room is done via Zigbee wireless protocol using real-time application running on Programmable Automation Controller. Because the system is connected via Ethernet to the power plant’s LAN, it could be remotely programmed and supervised via the Internet, reducing maintenance time and costs. System is tested during various ambience conditions including high temperatures in the summer (over 40C) and low temperatures during winter (below 25C), without any interrupt in its operation. This proves opportunity for industrial wireless networks application in the complex industrial environments like thermal power plants.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Aleksandar Nikolic received the B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering in 1991, 1999 and 2009, respectively, from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Since 1995 he has been with University of Belgrade, Serbia, as a Research Associate at the Department of Electrical Drives, where he is currently part-time Assistant Prof. He is now at Electrical Engineering Institute “Nikola Tesla”, Belgrade, Serbia, as a Counselor for the field of energy efficiency. He is also founder and a Head of Accredited Laboratory for Power Quality testing at Institute Nikola Tesla.
His special fields of interest include power quality and energy efficiency, control of induction motor drives and industrial automation. He has published over 70 papers and one chapter in international book “Torque Control”. He is reviewer of several international Journals. A.Nikolic is a Senior member of IEEE and a Member of the Board of Serbian Power Electronics Society.