Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of a 630 kVA Liquid-Immersed Distribution Transformer

This paper discusses a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) carried out on 630 kVA liquid-immersed distribution transformers with different winding conductor materials and energy performance levels. The LCA methodology for power transformers is still under development. Most LCA projects only take the manufacturing phase and its upstream value chain into account. If the transformer use phase is incorporated, assessments are conducted with the electricity mix of today, and usually only for the climate change impact category. This paper provides an LCA approach taking the manufacturing phase, use phase, and end-of-life phase into account, for several major impact categories, calculated with a projection of the electricity mix in the EU-27 over a 40-year period. Compared to existing approaches, this approach has the advantage of providing insights for determining the environmental trade-off between material use in the transformer and energy losses during transformer usage, while also taking into account the ongoing decarbonisation of the electricity supply.