Some questions and ideas about this, it's difficult to be precise since we're just looking at a picture of the execution plan:
-  in the pictures you can see a...

Ralph Kimball retired, but other members of the group have continued the work under a new name:
https://decisionworks.com/
I don't know if the old website gets any of...

Here's a link to a script to find the count of VLFs per database:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/SQL-Script-to-list-VLF-e6315249

When doing a subquery in the SELECT clause or as part of a CROSS APPLY, you typically want it to be correlated to the outer query.  Using the same alias...

Did the query return anything in the columns LoginName or ApplicationName?  That would help pinpoint who or what is happening that caused the log to grow.  With the results you...

I second the Kimball books recommendation.  While they may seem old, the wealth of information in them is difficult to match.

For PowerBi, here is a good article:

You can just apply the service pack SP3 to your existing 2008 R2 RTM Express with Advanced Services instance, I've done it before.  More information is available here:

It is very possible the problem is the connection settings, most likely ARITHABORT, which SSMS sets to ON, but SQLCMD sets to OFF.
Microsoft says this should always be set...