Programmable electronic instrument for condition monitoring of in-service power transformers

The objective of this paper is the design and development of the data-acquisition and storage parts of a measurement system that will be used for condition monitoring (CM) of power transformers. The data captured from the sensors and stored in the database will be used for the prediction of the power transformer's behavior. These data-storage and data-acquisition parts have been developed using data-warehouse (DW) techniques and virtual instruments (VIs). This paper makes a brief introduction to the whole CM system and describes in depth the data-acquisition and data-store subsystems. Then, the fundamental considerations about the installation and maintenance are outlined. Next, the results of the project are described, and other existing commercial CM systems are briefly discussed. Finally, the fundamental conclusions, obtained from the installation of this CM system, are shown. The CM system is currently installed and working properly in four electric power transformers.