Engineer: APUA customers can expect improved voltage quality

By Claneisha Gomes
[email protected]
Customers of the Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA) who depend on electricity distributed from the Swetes substation should see improvement in voltage quality from today.
This week, APUA engineers and Colombian electrical engineers collaborated on rehabilitating the transformer at the substation, according to Richard Joseph, substation maintenance and protection engineer.
“When the transformer is operating reliably customers should have better power quality, better voltages and equipment failure should actually lessen quite a bit,” he said.
Joseph said the maintenance of the transformer, which he estimated at U.S. $1 million, was needed “to extend the life of the transformer to the next 15 years” and rectify longstanding difficulty with its major feeders and larger circuits.
He disclosed that it was unnecessary for APUA to invest in the equipment used by the Colombians, explaining that there are “companies dedicated to do this type of work.”
“So, with this specific type of work we will continue as the need arises to invite companies to conduct these type of tests,” he added.
According to Joseph, the work included “checking the integrity of the transformers, oil reclamation and the removal of moisture that could affect the insulation and transformer-winding.”
Joseph said the substation’s power transformer was last refurbished in 2014; and during that assessment, samples of the transformer’s oil were sent abroad for analysis. Findings from the analyses of gases helped the team determine what repairs should be done three years later by the Colombian engineers.
(More in today’s Daily Observer)