Health index assessment of power transformer

Abstract

A Health index is a tool that processes service and condition data into a score which describes the overall health of an asset. The motivation behind this is to objectively and confidently assess the condition of power transformers so that reinvestment and maintenance decisions might be justified. This way, the technical lifetime of healthy assets might be safely increased, while risky assets can be identified and taken care of before they fail. Health indexing is particularly useful for evaluation of large transformer fleets, since it makes it easy to identify the assets most in need of additional attention. An important prerequisite for a health index to be useful is, however, that the availability of data is considered in the model design. A health index intended for use in Algeria will thus have to be customized to the data availability faced by most Algerian utilities and transformer users.