Interview with ISMAIL GÜNER – The author of TM Best article 2020
Why did you find this topic interesting / important (how did you decide to write about the topic)? I have always been intrigued by the...
Why did you find this topic interesting / important (how did you decide to write about the topic)?
I have always been intrigued by the lack of knowledge sharing and collaboration amongst electrical utilities on best practices of design specifications, condition assessment, maintenance and maximizing lifecycles of power transformers.
A significant number of power transformers in operation in North America and in Europe are in the second half of their life expectancy. Over the past decades, we have accumulated substantial behavioural data on older and newer designs, but we need to a better job in sharing the transformer behavioural analytics amongst ourselves for more reliable performance indicators. This would let us identify genetic or design-related problems, predict possible failure mechanisms and be proactive. Knowledge and data sharing among end-users can also help to compensate for unfamiliarity with a specific type of critical component, technology or supplier.
The explicit or written knowledge is, in a way, the tip of the iceberg. There is so much that is unwritten, learned with experience and difficult to document in guides and standards.
Before we purchase a vehicle or go to a new restaurant, one of the first things that we do is to read the review because we value the experiences of others. Sharing the post-mortem and failure pattern data between electrical network operators would provide the ability to anticipate a failure mechanism without any prior experience or condition assessment action on a critical component and to adjust its maintenance strategies accordingly.
Most end users tend to rely on technical societies such as IEEE, IEC, CIGRÉ to provide information on evolving equipment issues. Initiatives such as Transformers Academy by Transformers Magazine are important means to connect the experts with end-users.
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