April 7, 2020

Editorial Message

Dear Reader,   Three weeks ago I attended the Middle East Energy exhibition in Dubai. Less than two weeks after my return, we had to...

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Dear Reader,

 

Three weeks ago I attended the Middle East Energy exhibition in Dubai. Less than two weeks after my return, we had to make a decision on working from home because of the global measures to fight against the Covid 19 pandemic. In addition to this, three days before writing this message, Zagreb was hit by the strongest earthquake in the last 140 years, causing a lot of damage. Many were injured, and one girl died. So, now I am siting in my room and working while my kids are attending online school classes from their rooms. School boards have been replaced by mobile phones and tablets. It is quite common to hear small kids screeming while you are talking to a business partner. It has been quite a big change in a short time, not only in doing business, but also in living.

 

However, many great things have happened at the same time. I have been receiving messages of support all the way from Australia to Canada. The colleagues from China, where, fortunately, the situation is much better now, have offered to send me face masks or anything that I might need in this situation. Currently, preparing food is difficult, so one restaurant has been delivering us fresh food every day, completely free of charge. I want to pay, of course, but they simply do not want to hear about it.

 

I know some of our readers and associates are facing different challenges, that is why I am writing a slightly more personal message this time, to tell you that there always has been and always will be some kind of balance in life: you may lose something or have to give something up, but at the same time you will gain something you need.

 

We have been working hard under these challenging conditons, and I am proud of my colleagues, authors, editors, advertisers, and all others who have done a great job in order to get things done on time.

 

Based on the information I received at the end of the last and the beginning of this year, it looked like this would be a better year than the previous one was. However, with everything happening all over the world, it is not certain that this will be a good year in business terms. Yet, as I have already said, since there is always some kind of balance, I believe we will all get what we need the most.

 

We have been working hard under these challenging conditons, and I am proud of my colleagues, authors, editors, advertsers, and all others who have done a great job, worked overtime on their own initiative, innovated, and looked 360° around in order to get things done on time. I think the result is also great, because we have an edition presenting three interviews, four columns, and nine articles that all bring great stories with information from research, experience, knowledge, and updates about innovations and advanced solutions.

 

In his interview, Stephan Hoffarth talks about innovations in pluggable MV and HV power connections, about technical opportunities that they bring, and their economic benefits.

Marco Del Contrasto provides insight into the business and services related to non-ferrous products, such as strips and sheets made from copper, brass, aluminium, bronze, and German silver.

Erik Freyser talks about preventative maintenance practices and environmentally friendly repair solutions from oil and SF6 leaks, that minimise downtime and extend the lifespan of critical assets.

In his column, Steve Aubertin brings a demand forecast for the generator step-up transformers for the next decade, based on the trends in the past 30 years.

In the era when market reports are being delivered almost on a daily basis, Greg Sheppard and Hassan Zaheer provide useful methods to identify good from bad market research, which is critical for shaping strategic plans and reducing the risks in the decision-making process.

In the first UTRA column, Paul Jarman from University of Manchester writes about the importance of thermal design to transformer lifetime, based on the evidence gathered from many large scrapped transformers over the years, and about techniques that can be applied to avoid problems in the future.

Brian Sparling writes about managing existing transformers, which are mainly designed for stationary loads and ‘clean’ sine waves, while in reality they experience variable loads as well as higher harmonic content.

In his new column on standards relevant to transformers, P. Ramachandran from ABB brings an interesting survey on the evolution of different standards for transformers, covering IEC, IEEE, CIGRE, BSI, and CENELEC, including their historical development. I have been looking for such contribution for a long time, and I am really happy that it has finally been made.

Miguel Oliva et al. provide new insights into the exciting topics, such as how to achieve higher efficiency, reliability and resilience of the transformers and their operation, as well as presenting the latest trends and techniques in the field of digitalisation and future technologies that are yet to come. Georg Daemisch and Charles Cole write about how proactive transformer mapping assists in operational and financial decision-making. Manojmohan Subramanian deals with inter turn fault localisation using SFRA, and Zang Ying et. al. address transient voltage distribution along transformer windings.

Featured advertorial articles also bring a lot of useful technical content. Ole Kessler from Omicron writes about partial discharge testing on power transformers. In the article by ENERGO-COMPLEX and OBRE, you can read about on-site repairs and modernisation of transformers, as well as comprehensive diagnostics and assessment of the technical conditions. Oweld’s solutions for brazing of copper, brass, aluminium, bus bars, cables, wires and flat wires, as well as removing the resin from the CTC, are also described. The article about Huaming HWDK external reactor-type vacuum OLTC, which is a 3-phase on-load tap-changer designed for large currents and on-load voltages, provides insights into the design of the reactor, principles of the operation, parameters, as well as the standard tests.

If you would like to comment on some of the articles or claims in this magazine, feel free to contact me anytime.

In the end, as our author Miguel Oliva said, “Stay positive – it is the best medicine“. I wish you all to stay safe and healthy, and, of course, have a joyful reading.

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