January 7, 2016

Editorial Message Vol. 3 Issue 1

Dear readers, 2015 is behind us. It was an interesting year which brought a lot of novelties, all of which, off course, cannot be listed...

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Dear readers,

2015 is behind us. It was an interesting year which brought a lot of novelties, all of which, off course, cannot be listed here. Let me mention only a few of them, which I think are most important.

First of all, we have seen the introduction of the Ecodesign Regulation in the European Union market, which is expected to ensure that transformers become progressively more efficient. This means that new power transformers put into service in the EU internal market will have to fulfil minimum energy efficiency requirements. Tier 1 came into effect on the 1st July 2015, and Tier 2 will further tighten the regulation by July 2021.

The Ecodesign Regulation has been accepted as a positive step ahead, but even before this regulation took effect, the European Commission introduced a regulation for imposing provisional anti-dumping duty on imports of grain-oriented electrical steel from China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the U.S. in order to protect the local production, which in fact does not have enough capacity to satisfy the demand of the market. The regulation had been in effect for six months before the Commission imposed a definitive anti-dumping duty in October, which will be used until late 2020.

But this was only one battle in, let me call it, a world-spread GOES war where other countries such as USA, China, Brazil and Russia also participate.

On the technology front it was much more interesting. In 2015 Siemens manufactured and successfully tested the first synthetic ester-filled 400 kV transformer for National Grid’s Highbury site
in north London, UK. In 2014 Siemens successfully tested the first natural esterfilled 300 MVA, 420 kV transformer for the German utility TransnetBW. It will be interesting to see a further penetration of this technology, after it has been mastered by this OEM giant.

A lot of other products and solutions were presented in the course of the year, but few of them can be compared to what Transform group of companies did in October at the Transform 2015 event. They re-thought everything about transformers that used to be taken for granted and came up with more than a dozen ideas how to make transformers better, but still cheaper. The presentation of these concepts in a 3D lab was utterly impressive. In this issue we bring an article about Transformer 2020 study, and I recommend reading it in order to find out more about this intriguing  project.

In addition, this issue of Transformers Magazine brings four interviews, and several technical articles and advertorials. All pieces provide a lot of technical and business-related content, and I hope you will enjoy it. Have a pleasant reading!

At the beginning of the New Year, on behalf of the whole team of Transformers Magazine, I wish you a lot of success in your professional and private life, and I hope that the magazine will support you in achieving this success!

 

Mladen Banovic, Editor-in-Chief

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