Intelligent controller for a cooling system for a three-phase power transformer

Eskom, the national electricity supplier of South Africa struggle to supply sufficient amount of power each year. This is partially due to residential consumers that use appliances that required significant amount of power. This results in transformers that overheat which decrease the efficiency of the transformer. Also due to the heat the life expectancy of the transformers decreases. A solution to this problem is to cool the transformer in a controlled manner. This paper therefore provides the design of a controlled cooling system for a threephase power transformer that is energy efficient and displays the experimental results of this design. The cooling of the transformer make use of a thermoelectric cooling module (TECM) which is controlled by an programmable logic controller (PLC) which receives its data from a PT 100 thin sensors which is placed between the windings and core of the transformer. A prototype model of the actual transformer was used to perform the tests to indicate the cooling results. Solidworks® where used for the transformer simulation which were then implemented based on the results. A Flir thermal image camera was used to confirm the results and is compared to the simulated results. The payback period was determined to see how long the project will take before profit is made.