ABB Electrification Service has brought to market a breakthrough digital monitoring solution for power and distribution transformers in collaboration with Danish start-up Oktogrid. ABB Ability Asset Manager for Transformers (TRAFCOM) will enable industries to swiftly modernise outdated electrical grids, ensuring they can handle increased power demands with enhanced performance, reliability, and availability.
This next generation transformer sensor is quick and easy to fit, requiring no screws or tooling for installation. Instead, the TRAFCOM sensor can be mounted magnetically to the transformer within 15 minutes, transmitting data to the cloud almost immediately, significantly reducing the need for any maintenance downtime. It works independently of transformer type, make and age, enabling customers to benefit from real-time monitoring capabilities all within a single, unified interface as part of an end-to-end asset management system.
Mahmoud Abdelkhalek, Global Product Manager, ABB Electrification Service, said: “We know there are many electrical network transformers out there, which have never been monitored in 15-20 years, due to the high costs and complexity of installing sensoring technology. ABB Ability Asset Manager for Transformers overcomes these barriers as a simple and cost-effective way to modernize the grid.”
TRAFCOM offers a 4-in-1 proposition, measuring temperature and humidity, surface temperature, magnetic field, vibration, acoustics, and partial electrical discharges. The cloud-based monitoring solution allows customers to understand a transformer's condition in real time, enabling them to detect anomalies early, anticipate and avoid failures, while optimizing and planning for maintenance intervals.
Abdelkhalek added: “Rising energy consumption and the need to generate more cost-effective power stresses the electricity network and brings increased risk, but understanding how the transformer is performing means that plant and operational managers can plan and improve their processes with confidence.”
This seamless switch up to digitalization brings all the associated benefits of optimizing safety and efficiency of aging equipment, including reducing asset carbon emissions and delivering higher power performance, stability, and availability.
Golam Sadeghnia, CEO Oktogrid, said: "As industries double-down on their sustainability mandates, greater measurement capabilities are required to inform and shape their decarbonization strategies. Through our partnership with ABB, we’ve been able to create a solution that eliminates this transparency gap as we take pivotal steps toward a sustainable and resilient energy future."
Beyond utilities, TRAFCOM is equally suitable for customers involved in manufacturing as well as light and heavy industry, including segments such as commercial real estate, data centres, utilities, manufacturing, and more. To date, ABB customers in Finland and Spain have installed TRAFCOM at their premises, including one of continental Europe’s largest hospitals and a leading multinational group of steel companies.
