When a domestic tansformer brakes down there is lot of time wasted for repairing it and to?

Question

restore its functionally.

Give the most frequent reason for a breakdown of a transformer and suggest any ways of preventing the same.

Answer 1

Most of the elapsed time between a "breakdown" and a "repair" is because the qualified repair crew has to travel to the location (which may or may not be readily accessible) from a central staging area. Then there's the time to diagnose the fault, and the actual time-to-repair.

Part of the length of elapsed time (i.e. "getting to the site of the fault") is in tracking down WHICH transformer is causing the trouble. It's great if the homeowner calls in to the utility, gives his street address, and tells them what's happening. If the utility has to do the legwork, it takes much longer (because there's no real-time local monitoring of transformer 'health').

By far the most frequent cause of transformer failure is basic insulation failure. This can be brought about by two major factors (which are sometimes inter-related): thermal degradation and contamination.

Thermal degradation is the aging effect on the insulation caused by normal wear-and-tear. It is also the damage caused by short circuits and other high-energy incidents (like surges from lightning strikes, for example). The more the insulation is stressed, the more likely it is to fail.

Contamination can take many forms; moisture and conductive material are the most common, with a third possibility being abrasive material. Note that conductive and abrasive are not mutually exclusive! In this scenario, the introduction of contaminants actively destroys the insulation integrity by either directly damaging the protection, or by circumventing the protection with another (conductive) path.

To help reduce the thermal problem, have protective devices installed in the vicinity (like lightning arrestors), and try not to introduce sudden heavy loads to the system. That means keeping the six families on the single transformer from all operating their arc welders/washing machines/vacuums/electric heaters/air conditioners/AC motors at the same time. In other words, be energy conscious! Avoid stopping and starting heavy-draw items over short periods ... leave them off for a while between starts, just in case your neighbor needs to run his for a few minutes. Also, keep the area around the transformer free of vegetation and other obstructions, so that cooling air can reach the windings easily (most are cooled by simple convection/radiation).

To reduce the contamination effect: keep the area around the transformer clear of obstructions - if nothing's there, nothing can get in! If you see damage to the casing, notify the utility immediately - the design is (usually) supposed to be weatherproof, and the casing is the key.

Answer 2

Most progressive societies do repair by replacing the defective unit with an equivalent unit from their stock.

Then you have all the time to deal with the defective unit, which can always be used as a back-up unit.

If you take into account all the cost considerations, it may not be a bad deal. This kind of system has almost become a standard practice in repairs of automotive and electronic products, where trobleshooting and repairs can be very expensive.

As suggested by others frequent failures of a transormer would indicate faulty or substandard design or incorrect purchasing or procurement specification - meaning your buying an item with marginal input and output requirements.

Answer 3

Over load, age and burning up due to heating by over load.

In most places they switch the load from time to time.

Special equipment can switch them with very slight flicker. Let it cool of and keep them ready for next switch over.

Just reducing the load will cool them down, so they do not blow up.

Turn them off, by cutting the power. On certain pre-determined schedules.

Power company do this all the time, you can do it also the same things with some efforts on your part.

Answer 4

You have a short some where in the system, or the travsformer doesn't have enough volt amps