The stars are aligning for growth in the secondary transformer market in coming years, according to a new report from GTM Research, Transformer Monitoring Markets, 2013-2020: Technologies, Forecasts, and Leading Vendors.
For utilities with concern about theft or a high penetration of distributed energy resources, secondary transformer monitors will become increasingly important. There are also more options to monitor and manage data coming off secondary transformers, primarily from the AMI and MDM space, according to the report.
Monitors for secondary transformers have been available for years, with deployments at Oncor, Toronto Hydro and Xcel Energy, to name a few. But even more utilities will turn their attention to these assets.
“Continued penetration of electric vehicles, distributed generation, and volt/VAR optimization coupled with some utilities’ focus on asset management and revenue protection will continue to increase the value created from these technologies and power strong market growth,” Ben Kellison, smart grid analyst with GTM Research, wrote in the report. “These factors coupled with the increasing penetration of field area communications and data management and analytics software will allow the market for secondary transformer monitoring to overtake the power transformer monitoring market by 2015.”
GTM Research expects at least one top-50 utility to deploy transformer monitors across the bulk of its territory by the end of 2014, and then more utilities will follow suit in 2015 and 2016. Check out the full report for more details on how the market will take shape, including a taxonomy of the transformer monitoring market.