Computer generated transformer zones as part of township electrification design software

To assist with the large scale rural electrification program in South Africa, special CAD based software is being developed for the design process. A new tool is presented to further reduce design time. Manually delineating suitable distribution transformer locations and their service areas (transformer zones) is still a time consuming activity. Delineation of optimum transformer zones, minimizes cable lengths and improves transformer utilization. The software routine described in this paper, delineates such transformer zones rapidly producing near optimum solutions. This module can be used to speedily investigate various alternative design strategies. Testing has been done on real maps and the final layouts were found to require only minor adjustment. Software cannot ever produce completely acceptable solutions due to the complexity in township layouts. A sample computer design is presented and discussed.