What is Percentage Impedance & Calculate Percentage Impedance?

“The percentage impedance is nothing but a measure of the volt drops when the

transformer in on full load due to the winding resistance and leakage
reactance expressed as a percentage of the rated voltage.” Also in other words it is a
percentage of the ratio between the full load short circuit terminal voltage to nominal
voltage of the transformer. It is denoted by %Z. Z is called Impedance.

Secondly, it defines the voltage regulation of the transformer because of

maximum voltage regulation is directly proportional to the p.u impedance of the
transformer. So a high p.u impedance will reduce the short circuit level and on the other
it will result in poor voltage regulation. And a low p.u impedance will result in higher
short circuit level and good voltage regulation.

Percentage Impedance Calculation:

P
ercentage Impedance
Take a single transformer. The primary of the transformer will be connected with the
variable AC voltage source (variac) and the secondary terminal of the transformer will
be shorted as shown in the figure. The primary of the transformer will be energized from
low voltage level. Upon increasing the voltage across the primary, the
secondary current starts increasing. Rise the voltage in primary until to reach rated
secondary current in secondary winding. Now measure the voltage across the
secondary terminal. This is the voltage drop due to the internal resistance
and reactance of the transformer.

Percentage Impedance Formula:

Significance of percentage impedance:

 Increasing % Z or percentage impedance reduces the short circuit current and

 High Value of %Z percentage impedance causes more voltage drop and poor
voltage regulation. Finally, transformer delivers less efficiency.
 The %Z is used to design a protection switchgear. Typically, it is used to
calculate maximum level of fault current. So that, we can design a switch gear
to withstand that maximum level of fault current.

Let see an example.

The short circuit current can be calculated from the ratio of full load current to the
percentage impedance value. Thus, the formula of short circuit current using
percentage impedance,
Transformer rating

 75 kVA
 240 V secondary
 5% impedance

Calculate the full load secondary current

Therefore, the short circuit current Isc is

Therefore, the maximum short circuit current is almost 20 times of its full load current.

So that you can design or choose your switchgear to withstand at 20 times of its full
load current for the transformer of 5% percentage Impedance. The rating is called kAIC.
i.e if you have less than 5% i.e 2.5 % means the short circuit current still increase and
again you have to go for high rating of kAIC i.e 40 times for 2.5 %Z.