Development of a data acquisition and analysis system for a 10 kVA 3 phase switchable distribution transformer

Electrical engineering students at the University of South Australia have worked on an energy efficient 10 kVA 3 phase switchable distribution transformer system as their final year project in their undergraduate degree. Past research has shown that transformer efficiency gains can be made by switching between series and parallel winding configurations. A dsPIC33FJ256GP710 microcontroller is utilized to acquire transformer performance data from voltage and current sensors and perform waveform analysis (RMS magnitude and phase) using DSP techniques. In addition the microcontroller coordinates the switching of the winding configurations using solid state relays to obtain the optimum efficiency of the transformation of electrical power.