IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 27, NO.

2, APRIL 2012 1023

Power Engineering Letters

Transformer Voltage Regulation—An Alternative Expression
Gojko Joksimovi, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—This letter gives an alternative, compact, and exact

transformer voltage regulation expression. The derived expres-
sion, in an obvious way, shows that maximum-voltage regulation is
equal to the relative short-circuit voltage. Validation of the derived
expression is done through the comparison with two of the most
common expressions used through the literature.
Index Terms—Short-circuit voltage, transformer, transformer
impedance, voltage regulation.

I. INTRODUCTION

Fig. 1. (a) Simplified transformer equivalent circuit referred to the primary

D UE to the resistances of the windings and leakage reac-

tances, voltage drop takes place in a transformer. Accord-
ingly, the output voltage under load conditions is different from
side. (b) Phasor diagram for an inductively loaded transformer.

the output voltage under no-load conditions. This change of no-load secondary voltage referred to as the primary side.
voltage is well known as voltage regulation. Many classical text- From an approximate transformer equivalent circuit, where
books of transformers define voltage regulation [1]–[8]. Some and are transformer short-circuit resistance and reactance
of them give an approximate expression for the calculation of per phase Fig. 1(a), . The phasor diagram for the
voltage regulation; some define an exact expression which is in inductive loaded transformer is given in Fig. 1(b).
rather complex form and difficult for use. Moreover, from that From Fig. 1(b), it is obvious that
exact expression, it is difficult to conclude when voltage regula-
tion has maximal, minimal, or zero values. Anyways, all of them (2)
are based on the simplified transformer equivalent circuit which
neglects the parallel, magnetizing branch. This paper derives an From the theorem of cosines, follows:
alternative, compact, and exact transformer voltage regulation
expression based on the aforementioned simplified equivalent
circuit. The main benefit of the proposed expression is that it is
easy to find points of maximal, minimal, and zero voltage reg- (3)
ulation. where is the transformer impedance. As

II. TRANSFORMER VOLTAGE REGULATION

Voltage regulation is defined as the change in secondary (4)
voltage when rated load at a specified power factor is removed,
assuming constant value primary voltage. The regulation may
also be expressed in terms of primary voltage assuming con-
stant, no-load secondary voltage as follows: (5)

(1) From the short-circuit impedance triangle and

. Therefore
where and are the primary voltages of the loaded and
unloaded transformer, respectively, and is the constant, (6)

Since the short-circuit voltage is

Manuscript received November 11, 2010; revised May 09, 2011; accepted , in addition, defining rel-
October 25, 2011. Date of publication December 21, 2011; date of current ver-
sion March 28, 2012. Paper no. PESL-00136-2010. ative loading as , finally one could obtain
The author is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of
Montenegro, 81000 Podgorica, Montenegro (e-mail: joxo@ac.me).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2011.2175819 (7)

0885-8977/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

1024 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 27, NO. 2, APRIL 2012

From (1), follows:

(8)

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

From the derived voltage regulation (8), conclusions could be
derived as follows.
• Voltage regulation is equal to zero (i.e., voltage of the
loaded transformer is equal to the no-load voltage) when

(9) Fig. 2. Voltage regulation for the rated loaded transformer versus angle ': The
thick line represents the exact expressions (8) and (15), and the dotted line rep-
(10) resents approximate expression (16).

• Voltage regulation has maximal value (maximal secondary

voltage drop under the load) in the case when
(11)
which corresponds to the inductive loading and in case of
rated load is equal to the short-circuit voltage
Fig. 2 shows the voltage regulation curve versus angle for the
actual rated load transformer calculated from (8). This result is
compared with the two other expressions, common in literature
[4], [5], one exact

(12)

• Voltage regulation has minimal value (under the load, sec-

ondary voltage has maximal rise) when (15)

(13) and another one, approximate expression

and again is equal to . However, angles (16)

have no sense, so minimal voltage regulation occurs for
pure capacitive loading
It is obvious that (8) and (15) give identical values. The approx-
imate expression gives smaller voltage regulation values espe-
cially around the pure resistive load.
(14)

IV. EXAMPLE V. CONCLUSION

The single-phase transformer of the following data is given An alternative, compact, and exact transformer voltage regu-
10 kVA, 3/0.4 kV, , lation expression is derived. The main benefit of the proposed
40.5 , 43.34 , 4.81%. From the given data expression is that it is easy to find points of maximal, minimal,
. This and zero voltage regulation. The validation of the derived ex-
transformer has zero voltage regulation, under the full loading, pression is performed through the comparison with two of the
1, when the load angle is equal to (10) most common expressions used through the literature.

REFERENCES
[1] C. Kingsley and S. D. Umans, Electric Machinery. New York: Mc-
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and is equal to 4.81% (12). Minimal voltage regulation McGraw-Hill, 2004.
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