Tapchangers for De-energized Operation in Natural Ester Fluid, Mineral Oil, and Silicone

Author

Dix, L. ; Hopkinson, P.J.

fYear

2006

fDate

21-24 May 2006

Firstpage

40

Lastpage

44

Abstract

Natural ester seed oil is a biodegradable fluid that is increasingly being used as a replacement for mineral oil and for high temperature flashpoint liquids, including silicone and RTEMP. Electrical contact coking in mineral oil and in silicone has been a common problem with many types of contact materials in tapchangers for de-energized operation and also the reversing switch in load tapchangers. In recent years, an accelerated aging functional life test has been developed and presented to the Transformers Committee of IEEE that has had a good correlation with field data to sort out stable versus unstable combinations. This paper presents a comparative look at natural ester fluid versus mineral oil and silicone for several popular contact pairs. In addition to its biodegradability, Natural ester is shown to have considerably better thermal stability with contact pairs that are unstable in both mineral oil and silicone

Keywords

electrical contacts; minerals; on load tap changers; silicones; thermal stability; transformer oil; Electrical contact coking; Transformers Committee; biodegradable fluid; de-energized operation; high temperature flashpoint liquids; load tapchangers; mineral oil; natural ester fluid; silicones; thermal stability; Accelerated aging; Biodegradable materials; Biological materials; Contacts; Life testing; Liquids; Minerals; Petroleum; Switches; Temperature;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Transmission and Distribution Conference and Exhibition, 2005/2006 IEEE PES

Conference_Location

Dallas, TX

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9194-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TDC.2006.1668451

Filename

1668451