Breakdown Performance and Partial Discharge Development in Transformer Oil-Based Metal Carbide Nanofluids

In this work, the influence of semi-conductive SiC nanoparticles on the AC breakdown voltage and partial discharge development in natural ester oil FR3 is examined. Primarily, the dielectric constant and the electrical conductivity of the nanoparticles are measured following the broadband dielectric spectroscopy technique. The nanoparticles are added into the matrix following the ultrasonication process in three weight percentage ratios in order for their effect to be evaluated as a function of their concentration inside the base oil. The processing of the results reveals that the nanofluid containing SiC nanoparticles at 0.004% w/w demonstrates the highest AC dielectric strength improvement and shows the greatest resistance to the appearance of partial discharge activity. The mechanisms behind the aforementioned results are discussed in detail and confirmed by the broadband dielectric spectroscopy technique, which reveals that this particular nanofluid sample is characterized by lower dielectric constant and electrical conductivity than the one with double the weight percentage ratio.

Partial Discharge Diagnostics: Data Cleaning and Feature Extraction

Detection of partial discharge (PD) in switchgears requires extensive data collection and time-consuming analyses. Data from real live operational environments pose great challenges in the development of robust and efficient detection algorithms due to overlapping PDs and the strong presence of random white noise. This paper presents a novel approach using clustering for data cleaning and feature extraction of phase-resolved partial discharge (PRPD) plots derived from live operational data. A total of 452 PRPD 2D plots collected from distribution substations over a six-month period were used to test the proposed technique. The output of the clustering technique is evaluated on different types of machine learning classification techniques and the accuracy is compared using balanced accuracy score. The proposed technique extends the measurement abilities of a portable PD measurement tool for diagnostics of switchgear condition, helping utilities to quickly detect potential PD activities with minimal human manual analysis and higher accuracy.

Partial Discharge Pulse Segmentation Approach of Converter Transformers Based on Higher Order Cumulant

As one of the most effective methods to detect the partial discharge (PD) of transformers, high frequency PD detection has been widely used. However, this method also has a bottleneck problem; the biggest problem is the mixed pulse interference under the fixed length sampling. Therefore, this paper focuses on the study of a new pulse segmentation technology, which can separate the partial discharge pulse from the sampling signal containing impulse noise so as to suppress the interference of pulse noise. Based on the characteristics of the high-order-cumulant variation at the rising edge of the pulse signal, a method for judging the starting and ending time of the pulse based on the high-order-cumulant is designed, which can accurately extract the partial discharge pulse from the original data. Simulation results show that the location accuracy of the proposed method can reach 94.67% without stationary noise. The field test shows that the extraction rate of the PD analog signal can reach 79% after applying the segmentation method, which has a great improvement compared with a very low location accuracy rate of 1.65% before using the proposed method.

Automatic PRPD Image Recognition of Multiple Simultaneous Partial Discharge Sources in On-Line Hydro-Generator Stator Bars

In this study, a methodology for automatic recognition of multiple simultaneous types of partial discharges (PDs) in hydro-generator stator windings was proposed. All the seven PD sources typical in rotating machines were considered, and up to three simultaneous sources could be identified. The functionality of identifying samples with no valid PDs was also incorporated using a new technique. The data set was composed of phase-resolved partial discharge (PRPD) patterns obtained from on-line measurements of hydro-generators. From an input PRPD, noise and interference were removed with an improved version of an image-based denoising algorithm previously proposed by the authors. Then, a novel image-based algorithm that separates partially superposed PD clouds was proposed, by decomposing the input pattern into two sub-PRPDs containing discharges of different natures. From the sub-PRPDs, one extracts features quantifying the PD distribution over amplitudes and the contour of PD clouds. Those features are fed as inputs to several artificial neural networks (ANNs), each of which solves a part of the classification problem and acts as a block of a larger system. Once trained, ANNs work collaboratively to identify an unknown sample. Good results were obtained, with overall accuracies ranging from 88% to 94.8% for all the considered PD sources.