Hot topics at CIRED 2019

This year’s CIRED was held in Madrid, Spain from June 3–6 and Vaisala was there enjoying many expert discussions with other leading power systems technicians, engineers, and specialists. CIRED is dedicated to increasing the competencies, skills, and knowledge of the electricity distribution community and this year’s event was certainly a success in that regard.

One of the hot topics discussed was distributed energy resources. One of the key ways to efficiently utilize electricity is to minimize the lifetime cost of assets through better monitoring and data analysis.  

The power industry is currently experiencing smaller operational budgets while also needing to minimize large capital expenditures for new equipment, so extending asset lifetime and minimizing unexpected repair and replacement is needed. Online and maintenance-free monitoring can help in this regard, as well as bringing other significant benefits to the industry.

The benefit of real-time data analysis

Our solution is the Vaisala Optimus™ DGA Monitor OPT100, which offers real-time online monitoring with dissolved gas analysis (DGA). The benefit is that the continuous data and analysis can be used to show trends in real time, leading to greater insight about the health of a power transformer. With better data, maintenance teams can identify and deal with potential faults before they lead to breakdown, lowering overall costs by extending asset lifetimes.

Of course, data is only useful in the first place if it can be accessed, which is why the OPT100 monitor supports three of the most popular communication protocols – Modbus, DNP3, and IEC 61850 . The communications protocols enable supervisory control and collecting the gas measurements. IEC 61850 protocol makes it also possible for the devices to understand each other without additional configuration or implementation. This results much higher level of automation between devices, even from many vendors, with a lower cost.

Pushing down lifetime costs

In addition to harnessing digitalization to enable power transformers to be used longer, there are other ways OPT100 can help to reduce lifetime costs of power transformers. OPT100 is the world’s first maintenance-free multi-gas DGA monitor, requiring no consumables of any kind.

This means there are no carrier or calibration gasses to monitor and replace regularly, nor measurement components to replace periodically. OPT100 doesn’t require any fixed filters or filter wheels, membranes or capillary tubes that will wear out and need repair or replacement. This removes the need for regular maintenance visits, which leads directly to resource optimization, lower costs for asset owners, and a significant amount of time saved. The Vaisala Optimus™ DGA Monitor OPT100 is also easy to install by a company’s own personnel by simply connecting the oil and power.

Watch our video on maintenance-free monitoring

Find out more about communication protocols  involved