The Unique Role of Wind Turbine Step-Up Transformers

Posted: Jul, 13 - 2009

Published: Jul, 14 - 2009

Format: application/pdf

No Of Pages: 4 pages

Language: English

Abstract

Harnessing wind energy to perform work is not a new concept.
 

Since the earliest of times, wind power has been captured with sails to allow traders, merchants and explorers to ply their trades and discover the world around them.
 

On land, windmills have been used for irrigation, grinding grains, and performing crude manufacturing for centuries. Even the generation of electricity from wind power is not anew idea; What is new, however, is the scale at which this renewable energy source is being used today.
 

Early wind generation served a local need,often supplying power for isolated equipment. Today, wind energy represents nearly 5% of the US electrical generation and is targeted to reach 20% in the foreseeable future.
 

For this to happen, wind turbine outputs need to be gathered, stepped-up to transmission levels and passed across the nation's interconnected powergrid to the end users. The role of the Wind Turbine Step-Up (WTSU)transformer in this process is critical and, as such, its design needs to be carefully and thoughtfully analyzed and reevaluated in overview.
 

Historically this WTSU transformer function has been handled by conventional, "off the shelf" distribution transformers, but the relatively large numbers of recent failures would strongly suggest that WTSU transformer designs need to be made substantially more robust. WTSU transformers are neither conventional "off the shelf" distribution transformers nor are they conventional "off the shelf" power generator step-up transformers. WTSU transformers fall somewhere in between and as such, we believe, requires unique design standard.
 

Although off-shore windfarms using dry-type transformers are beginning to grow in popularity,for this discussion we will look only at liquid-filled transformers that are normally associated with inland wind farm sites.