March 2017 – BIS and International Copper Association India (ICA India) has taken the initiative to spread awareness among power utilities and transformer manufacturers to help them adopt the standard and update their technical specifications. In an attempt to proliferate sustainable development in India, they conducted a workshop on “Standardisation, Certification & Quality Control of Distribution Transformers. The workshop was conducted in association with Indian Transformer Manufacturers Association (ITMA) and Central Power Research Institute (CPRI) in Bhopal recently.

This seminar is very specific to bring all stakeholders – BIS officials, Distribution transformer manufacturers, regional power utilities & testing agencies at one platform to discuss the issues related to certification process. With the introduction of IS 1180 (Part-1), latest amendment in Aug 2016 it is expected that many manufacturers would upgrade their facilities to conform to the required specifications.

The speakers in the event were representatives from BIS, Regional DISCOMs, OEMs and testing agencies. The event was well received by consultants, transformer manufacturers, power utilities and general industries utilising the distribution transformers.

Transformers play a crucial role in the power distribution network and any premature failure creates disruption of power supply to consumers and its extent of effect depends upon the quality. High efficiency transformers create economic benefits for society in addition to the reduced greenhouse gas emissions, improved reliability and potentially longer service life. With these benefits in mind, many countries have taken policy initiatives to establish mandatory and voluntary programmes to conserve energy and to help the domestic markets by adopting energy-efficient transformers. The focus of the seminar was to emphasise the importance of testing of transformers, and how to utilize transformers to increase its efficiency and reliability.

There was also a panel discussion that discussed the many aspects of this issue – aspects such as the life cycle cost, of the transformer to be calculated considering financial point of view, taking into account the cost of energy losses, failure risk and maintenance, as well as the investment cost and the residual value of the transformer at the moment of retirement.