ABB to help US utilities with a transformer recovery initiative

2015-8-10 ABB

 USA, Washington D.C.: Last week ABB testified before Congress at a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing and met with U.S. policymakers regarding minimizing U.S. grid vulnerabilities, states the company in the news release.

With the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) raising concerns about the effects of the loss of large power transformers on the grid and the economy, due to unpredictable circumstances such as natural disasters or terrorist attack, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has recently issued a first draft of new reliability standards for physical security measures, which mandate that all electric utilities identify and protect critical substations within their system, addressing the security of critical equipment which includes large power transformers.

To further support electrical utilities and address the DOE’s concerns, ABB is launching a "Transformer and Grid Resiliency and Recovery" initiative, which will cover the assessment, hardening, monitoring, rapid repair and rapid replacement of large power transformers.

In recent years, ABB has partnered with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Electric Power Research Institute and Houston-based transmission and distribution utility CenterPoint Energy to develop a tested prototype rapid recovery transformer known as “RecX.”

The “RecX” spare transformer could conceptually be transported and installed to replace a failed large power transformer in about a week as opposed to several months.

Source: ABB