TATA Steel in Thailand moves closer to zero failures
Thailand, Bangkok: Thailand is aiming to enhance its status as a regional logistics hub.
Image for illustration purposes
Thailand, Bangkok: Thailand is aiming to enhance its status as a regional logistics hub.
For that purpose, it needs to continue investing in transport infrastructure and urbanisation; this requires steel.
Production of steel is an energy-intensive manufacturing process that needs efficient and reliable electricity supply. The manufacturing processes requires high currents that enable extremely high temperatures and frequent on- and off-switching for rapid cool down. These huge fluctuations in power consumption create voltage variations, stressing the electrical infrastructure, including transformers, to their limits.
Transformers are critical assets in electrical networks. A transformer outage can cause substantial loss in industrial production, for example if a furnace starts to cool down when it is not supposed to. Setting up smart condition monitoring and diagnostics for the transformer fleet and maintaining it efficiently is critical to prevent power outages and avoid loss of production.
Tata Steel in Thailand is adopting intelligent devices and asset health management software from Hitachi ABB Power Grids open TXpertTM Ecosystem for transformers in three of its manufacturing facilities. These will provide actionable insights on the operational health of the fleet and help to reduce costs and risks, optimise operations, extend life-expectancy and enhance environmental performance.
“Power transformers are crucial for enabling the steel-making process. It is very important for us to understand the condition of the transformer fleet to minimise the loss of revenue prolonging the time-between-failure and avoiding long time-to-repair,” said Dr Aree Wangsupphaphol, Department Manager – Maintenance Expert Group, Tata Steel Thailand. “The TXpertTM Ecosystem from Hitachi ABB Power Grids immediately caught our attention as it delivers the high-performance characteristics and features needed to digitalise our transformers and achieve our vision of zero failures.”
Source: Hitachi ABB Power Grids