A Method for Quantitative Assessment of Carbon Emissions During the Operational Phase of Transformers

Against the backdrop of the "dual carbon" goals, the power industry urgently needs to accurately quantify the carbon emissions during the operation phase of transformers to optimize equipment management and promote low-carbon transformation. However, the current carbon footprint analysis of power equipment mostly focuses on the production phase or the processing technology of some parts, lacking a systematic assessment of carbon emissions under complex working conditions during the operation phase. In addition, traditional methods for estimating carbon emissions mostly rely on empirical data, making it difficult to accurately reflect the dynamic changes in the direct and indirect carbon emissions of transformers. To address this issue, this paper first conducts a characteristic analysis of the carbon emission components during the operation phase of transformers. The total carbon emissions are decomposed into direct carbon emissions and indirect carbon emissions. The direct carbon emissions come from the greenhouse gas emissions during the fault process, while the indirect carbon emissions are derived from the no-load losses and load losses during power transmission. On this basis, this paper uses the multiple linear regression analysis method to fit the relationship between the commissioning time of the transformer, the voltage level, the rated capacity, and the dissolved gas content in the oil, and obtains a direct carbon emission accounting model. At the same time, combined with the physical characteristics of no-load losses and load losses, an indirect carbon emission accounting model under different working conditions is constructed. Finally, the global warming potential (GWP) and the carbon dioxide emission factor are used to calculate the carbon dioxide equivalent. This paper takes the actual operation data of 110kV transformers in North China, China as the verification object. The case calculation shows that almost all the carbon emissions during the operation of the transformer come from power losses, and the annual carbon emissions of this transformer are approximately 404,473 kg CO<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> equivalent. The calculation model proposed in this paper is effective and reasonable, and it fills the key link of the operation phase in the life cycle carbon footprint analysis.