How a Mobile Transformer Can Improve Energy Resilience
Image courtesy of Asian Development Bank under Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic License, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.
A mobile transformer has been developed that has the potential to substantially improve the efficiency and effectiveness of power restoration and recovery operations, including for solar and wind facilities. Anything that can help get the lights on faster always piques my interest, so let’s take a closer look.
What Exactly is a Mobile Transformer?
Hitachi Energy developed the technology, and Avangrid recently purchased one of these devices. It is designed for use during planned maintenance activities, forced outage repairs, outages caused by severe weather and other natural causes, sabotage and terrorism, and as a backup solution.
In Avangrid’s case, the 168 megavolt-ampere (MVA) mobile transformer was custom made to be able to be installed to any of Avangrid’s onshore wind and solar facilities within 2-3 months. The transformers were hauled on trailers with semi-trucks to the designated deployment site.
The technology will essentially be used as a temporary measure to mitigate the impact of outages caused by a damaged transformer. The mobile transformer will bring energy production back online until permanent replacement equipment can be brought to the site.
Clearly, there are many benefits to this technology, and the timing of its development in the market is pitch perfect – more and more clean energy sources are being brought online, severe weather will likely continue to increase over time, and, as of the time of this writing, the U.S. is still experiencing delays acquiring transformers.
For these reasons, Hitachi Energy, the largest global transformer manufacturer, has announced plans to dramatically ramp up production of its mobile transformers, facilitated by a $1.5 billion investment in the manufacturing of the devices.
In the final analysis, reliability and resiliency are the key buzzwords in our increasingly electrified world. As climate change continues to intensify weather patterns, any technology like the mobile transformer that can help with restoration and recovery is worth its weight in gold.
