Engineers use data to manage grid transformers, boosting reliability to homes, farms
Pay attention the next time you drive near your home, farm or business. You’ll notice small, green utility boxes all over the place. They’re distribution transformers. If they’re not working properly, electricity won’t flow to your lights and appliances.
Those boxes take kilovolts of electricity (that’s high voltage, measured in 1,000s of volts) from transmission lines and step it down to the safer, practical 120 or 240 volts that power our daily lives.
“Utilities have plenty of them,” said Zhaoyu Wang, an Iowa State University professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Most of them only supply two to 10 customers.”
The city of Ames, for example, with a population of about 66,000, has about 5,500 distribution transformers on its grid serving about 29,000 customers, according to the city’s Electric Department.
These are not smart devices. There are no sensors attached to let utilities know if there’s any kind of problem. Utilities have been in the habit of keeping a large inventory of the boxes that had cost $1,000 to $2,000 apiece.
But that’s no longer a good option. Costs of the boxes have tripled. Boxes are on long back orders. And the boxes are getting overloaded and overheated as we all depend on more and more electricity to run vehicles, heat pumps, tools and devices.