Volume 6 Number 4
One of the major competitive factors in medium voltage components, given the present utility environment, is increasing price pressures. For many suppliers worldwide this has resulted in a need to integrate functions of apparatus as much as possible so as to reduce costs and also to offer the greatest value to customers. Says Pentti Mähönen, “given growing cost pressures, we see that integrating different functions is particularly important today. That is exactly what people in this industry are now thinking.” Mähönen is Product Development Manager in the Instrument Transformer and MV Systems Division of ABB Transmit situated in Vaasa, Finland. This large ABB operation has had a long history of manufacturing its own cast resin insulators and utilizing this material to integrate the insulator directly into the apparatus.
Instrument transformers for indoor use represent one of the major production items at the Vaasa plant. The Finnish operation serves the local market and also exports to IEC-standard countries in South America and elsewhere not covered directly by other ABB plants. “Product coordination is particularly important” notes Mähönen “since there is obviously quite a lot of duplication in production among these various factories.”
Product Development Engineer Vesa Virtanen states that, consistent with the growing requirement for multi-functionality, the trend today in instrument transformers is toward units combining current and voltage sensors. He remarks, however, that it is more challenging to manufacture these, especially for outdoor applications. Virtanen also indicates that most of the growth in production of instrument transformers at the Vaasa facility in recent years has been in the area of sensors since assembly of this equipment has moved gradually to various ABB licensees located throughout the world.
According to Virtanen, the replacement of current transformers with new sensors and relays offers the benefit of reducing the number of different models required to cover the whole range compared to conventional instrument transformers. Cast epoxy resin is seen as the ideal insulator for this new equipment. “It is an insulating material as well as a construction material” he points out “and we can produce different shapes according to the different functional requirements.”
