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Economic Evaluation of Transformer Losses
Economic Evaluation of Transformer Losses (photo credit: elettromil.com)

Transformer’s cost

Transformer losses represent power that cannot be delivered to customers and therefore have an associated economic cost to the transformer user/owner.

A reduction in transformer losses generally results in an increase in the transformer’s cost.

Depending on the application, there may be an economic benefit to a transformer with reduced losses and high price (initial cost), and vice versa. This process is typically dealt with through the use of “loss evaluations”, which place a dollar value on the transformer losses to calculate a total owning cost that is a combination of the price and the losses.

Typically, each of the transformer’s individual loss parameters, no-load losses, load losses, and auxiliary losses, are assigned a dollar value per kilowatt ($/kW).

Information obtained from such an analysis can be used to compare prices from different manufacturers or to decide on the optimum time to replace existing transformers.

There are guides available, through standards organizations, for the estimation of the cost associated with transformer losses. Loss evaluation values can range from about $500/kW upwards of $12000/kW for the no-load losses and from a few hundred dollars per kilowatt to about $6000 to 8000/kW for load losses and auxiliary losses.

Values will depend upon the application.

Reference: The Electric Power Engineering Handbook by Grigsby, L.L (Get it from Amazon)

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Edvard Csanyi

Electrical engineer, programmer and founder of EEP. Highly specialized for design of LV/MV switchgears and LV high power busbar trunking (<6300A) in power substations, commercial buildings and industry facilities. Professional in AutoCAD programming.

3 Comments


  1. Amy Baker
    Jan 21, 2014

    Well, as we all know, transformer loss is here to stay. Reducing this loss did appear easy when I was back in grad school but today, when I actually make loss evaluations, I know just how hard it is. Too many tradeoffs!


  2. amsh
    Jan 04, 2014

    I want to contribute for your blog. I am already running a science blog.


  3. Daud Isa
    Jan 01, 2014

    Thank you for sharing wish you publication will be strong contributatin to electrical development. Thank so much.

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