Patent ID: 6842718

Claim:
In a cooling system for an electrical power transformer, said cooling system having at least a coolant pump, a heat exchanger unit, a plurality of current and temperature sensors for monitoring operation of cooling system, the transformer and ambient air temperature, and a programmable computer controller comprising at least a CPU and a data storage memory, a method of automated control of cooling system operation, comprising the steps performed by the computer controller of: a) obtaining data from the plurality of sensors; b) computing a Measured Heat Removal rate (MHR) value for the cooling system based upon data obtained from at least one temperature sensor monitoring coolant temperature; c) computing a Calculated Heat Removal rate (CHR) value for the transformer based at least upon data obtained from sensors monitoring coolant temperature and ambient air temperature; d) computing a ratio value for MHR/CHR; and e) generating an alarm condition indication when the ratio value computed in (d) it is not within a predetermined range of values.