K-rated Transformers

[Mr. Pickle]

I have a client that wants to use K-rated transformers for everything. They do have various building types ranging from healthcare to just office spaces.

Seems like a bad idea to me, not sure why though other than extra cost.

Can anyone tell me why this is a bad idea or if it is a good idea?

 

[jim dungar]

Waste of money and resources.
There is generally no proven need for K-rated transformers at the design stage. If they were regularly required they would be available ' over the counter' and not need to be special ordered.

 

[tortuga]

They do have various building types ranging from healthcare to just office spaces.

I know nothing about healthcare but K13 is a common default in telecom, I don think of them as rare or hard to get, now they prefer Harmonic Mitigating Transformers (HMTs) over simple K-rated units.
People think of telecom and data centers as running all new state of the art server equipment, but some large telecom equipment out there is actually pretty old so they may have their reasons.
HMTs use phase shifting and zero-sequence flux cancellation to neutralize the harmonics, keeping voltage distortion lower and improving the power quality for the IT gear / servers.
If your client is concerned about it, its probably worth looking at IEEE C57.110 and whatever source recommended it, help them weigh the pros and cons and look for some recent articles like in IEEE spectrum and consider what the load really is.

https://documents.hammondpowersolutions.com/documents/Literature/Technical_Articles/HPS-How-HMT-Outperform-K-Rated-Transformers.pdf

 

[infinity]

A few other comments from a recent thread.

K-rated Transformers

I'm curious what most people are seeing nowadays with respect to K rating for dry-type xfmrs in various applications. It seems like K-ratings above K1 are becoming a thing of the past. Is that what you're seeing as well?

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