ACTOM’s High Voltage Equipment (HVE) division has started to adapt its instrument transformer range to use environmentally friendly ester fluid in place of mineral oil as the insulating medium.
Etienne Venter, Senior Design Engineer at HVE led the team responsible for designing the first of the new products. He says, “We have developed and tested an 11 kV pole-mounted ester fluid insulated metering instrument transformer, which we introduced to the market in September last year."
The changeover to ester fluid is being applied progressively up to mid-2023 to the division’s entire instrument transformer range, which comprises current transformers, voltage transformers and various types of metering instrument transformers of between 3.3 kV and 132 kV.
“We will continue to offer and supply conventional mineral oil insulated units to the market, but expect our new ester fluid insulated units to be widely adopted. We expect demand for them will increase steadily – especially among power utilities, municipalities and the renewable energy sector – in line with the accelerating worldwide trend towards the decarbonisation of transmission and distribution equipment,” Venter says.
Ester fluid is a biodegradable and high-level dielectric insulating fluid. It offers a number of beneficial environmental and performance features.
- It reduces the risk of environmental damage in the case of spillages.
- It is recyclable at the end of the service life of the equipment, resulting in low disposal costs.
- It has a higher flash point than mineral oil, which means there is no risk of a fire in the event of a major failure of the equipment.
- It has a high temperature stability, so can be subjected to high temperatures for longer than mineral oil.
- It has higher thermal conductivity than mineral oil, which makes it better suited for regulating transformer temperatures.
- It promotes extended asset lifetime, due to the slower aging rate of the cellulose paper in a transformer. It draws moisture out of cellulose insulation, thus extending its life.
For more information visit: www.actom.co.za
