Balancing Current Distribution in Parallel Windings of Furnace Transformers Using the Genetic Algorithm

This paper presents a model for calculating and balancing the current distribution in parallel windings of furnace transformers. The proposed model is based on the finite-element method and takes into account the ¿skin effect¿ impact on the individual conductor resistances and self inductances. Because of mutual inductive coupling between the parallel windings, electromagnetic forces will cause a nonuniform current distribution in parallel windings. An illustrative example is investigated and uniform configuration is considered for the parallel windings. The obtained numerical results show the current distribution in parallel windings is not uniform in this case. Therefore, an effective technique is proposed for balancing the current distribution using the genetic algorithm. A comprehensive computer program in MATLAB is developed, which can be used to find an optimal solution for the proposed optimization problem. Finally, the proposed approach is verified by experiment and some comparative numerical results are presented.