No description available.

No description available.

This research investigates partial discharge phenomena of on-site power transmission cables of 69 kV and 161 kV by inspecting the data measured under various environments. Effective procedures and methods are suggested for estimating insulation condition of power transmission cables. To tackle the problem of interference of the environmental noises to the on-site power transmission cables, a detection method is presented based on the relationship among the amplitude, phase, and focused area of electrical signals. The difference between the outer and inner electrical signals in power transmission cable is analyzed to improve the accuracy of pattern recognition. In addition, the insulation conditions of the cable joint and the cable terminator are evaluated by comparing results of electrical and non-electrical detections. Finally, a standard procedure with some key points of inspection processes under various environments is suggested to evaluate the cable insulation degradation based on the inspection data obtained from various environments.

No description available.

This work investigates how HV impulses affect the behavior of partial discharge (PD) activity and the low voltage dielectric response of oil-impregnated paper insulation. It also investigates how the change in the PD activity is related to the degradation level of oil-impregnated paper insulation. In order to accomplish these objectives, the ageing were done under three different electrical stress conditions, i.e. HV impulses following an early stage 50 Hz AC PD activity, a prolonged PD activity at a 50 Hz AC stress alone, and a combination of HV impulses and a prolonged PD activity at a 50 Hz AC stress. In order to predict the level of deterioration caused by each ageing stress condition, the dielectric spectroscopy (DS) measurements in a frequency range of 1.0 mHz to 1.0 kHz were performed before and after subjecting a test object to each of the ageing stress conditions.      The investigations were mainly done on the test samples consisting of a cavity deliberately introduced between the layers of oil-impregnated paper. Additionally, the investigation about the effect of HV impulses alone on the DS results was done on aged oil-impregnated paper transformer bushing.      The PD experimental results presented in this thesis indicate that HV impulses below the impulse breakdown stress following an early stage AC PD activity will neither cause a significant change in phase resolved partial discharge (PRPD) patterns nor damage oil-impregnated paper insulation to a level that can be noticed with visual observations. On the other hand, a prolonged PD activity at a 50 Hz AC stress can cause the change in PRPD patterns by decreasing the total PD charge and the number of PD pulses, but cannot quickly damage the oil-impregnated paper insulation as it would do when it is combined with HV impulses. In addition to that, the results show that the combination of both, HV impulses and a prolonged PD activity at a 50 Hz AC stress can cause a high drop in the PD parameters (total PD charge and number of PD pulses).       The DS results show that HV impulses below the impulse breakdown stress following an early stage 50 Hz AC PD activity will not cause a significant increase in the real part of the complex capacitance and in the dissipation factor as they will do when they are combined with a prolonged PD activity at a 50 Hz AC stress. Further, the dielectric spectroscopy results obtained every three hours during the ageing of oil-impregnated paper insulation by a prolonged PD activity at an AC stress show that the dissipation factor will increase, but the PD parameters (total PD charge and the repetition rate) will decrease with time of PD application. For a case of the aged oil-impregnated paper transformer bushing, HV impulses of amplitudes up to 200 kV did not result in the change in the dissipation factor curve before removing insulating oil from the bushing. However, after removing about 2.5 liters of insulating oil from the bushing, HV impulses resulted in the change in the dissipation factor curve. The magnitudes of the dissipation factor curves appeared to be much higher in the middle frequencies region, i.e. the frequencies between 10 mHz and 100 Hz. After refilling the bushing with the same insulating oil, the loss peak shifted towards the higher frequencies.      To understand how the ageing by-products initiated by PDs in the small cavity can modify the geometry of oil-impregnated paper insulation; the model of oil-impregnated paper insulation, comprising of a small cavity, was implemented in Finite Element Method (FEM) software (COMSOL Multiphysics 4.2a). The comparison between the simulation and experimental results show that PD by-products will result in two zones, i.e. aged and unaged zones, and the aged zone will grow with time of PD application; thereby increasing the dissipation factor. On the other hand, in order to interpret  the change in the dissipation factors for the dielectrics in aged oil-impregnated paper transformer bushing after had been exposed to HV impulses, a model of a part of the condenser body (oil-paper insulation) was also implemented in the FEM software (COMSOL Multiphysics 4.2a). To model a condition of low insulating oil level in the bushing, a part of oil subdomains was replaced with the air dielectric properties. A comparison between the simulation and experimental dissipation factor curves indicate that HV impulses will produce the by-products (ions), which will increase the conductivity of air when the bushing has low insulating oil level. On refilling the bushing with the same insulating oil, the insulating oil will take these ions and the reactions between the aged insulating oil by-products (such as acids) and the ions, may produce more ions, thereby increasing further the conductivity of the insulating oil. / <p>QC 20140303</p>

Increased pressure on high voltage power distribution components has been created in recent years by a demand to lower costs and extend equipment lifetimes. This has led to a need for condition based maintenance, which requires a continuous knowledge of equipment health. Power transformers are a vital component in a power distribution network. However, there are currently no established techniques to accurately monitor and diagnose faults in real-time while the transformer is on-line. A major factor in the degradation of power transformer insulation is partial discharging. Left unattended, partial discharges (PDs) will eventually cause complete insulation failure. PDs generate a variety of signals, including electrical pulses that travel through the windings of the transformer to the terminals. A difficulty with detecting these pulses in an on-line environment is that they can be masked by external electrical interference. This thesis develops a method for identifying PD pulses and determining the number of PD sources while the transformer is on-line and subject to external interference. The partial discharge detection system (PDDS) acquires electrical signals with current and voltage transducers that are placed on the transformer bushings, making it unnecessary to disconnect or open the transformer. These signals are filtered to prevent aliasing and to attenuate the power frequency, and then digitised and analysed in Matlab, a numerical processing software package. Arbitrary narrowband interference is removed with an automated Fourier domain threshold filter. Internal PD pulses are separated from stochastic wideband pulse interference using directional coupling, which is a technique that simultaneously analyses the current and voltage signals from a bushing. To improve performance of this stage, the continuous wavelet transform is used to discriminate time and frequency information. This provides the additional advantage of preserving the waveshapes of the PD pulses for later analysis. PD pulses originating within the transformer have their waveshapes distorted when travelling though the windings. The differentiation of waveshape distortion of pulses from multiple physical sources is used as an input to a neural network to group pulses from the same source. This allows phase resolved PD analysis to be presented for each PD source, for instance, as phase/magnitude/count plots. The neural network requires no prior knowledge of the transformer or pulse waveshapes. The thesis begins with a review of current techniques and trends for power transformer monitoring and diagnosis. The description of transducers and filters is followed by an explanation of each of the signal processing steps. Two transformers were used to conduct testing of the PDDS. The first transformer was opened and modified so that internal PDs could be simulated by injecting artificial pulses. Two test scenarios were created and the performance of the PDDS was recorded. The PDDS identified and extracted a high rate of simulated PDs and correctly allocated the pulses into PD source groups. A second identically constructed transformer was energised and analysed for any natural PDs while external interference was present. It was found to have a significant natural PD source.

No description available.

Pre-breakdown phenomena in transformer liquids have been extensively investigated. The published work can be broadly categorised into streamer and partial discharge (PD) studies, with the former focusing on physical nature and the latter being more relevant to industrial applications. Mineral oil, as the dominant candidate, has been used in power transformers for over a century. In the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in filling power transformers with alternative liquids, e.g. esters and gas-to-liquids (GTL) based oils. This work aims to correlate the PD and streamer characteristics of three transformer liquids under AC stress. The liquids include a conventional mineral oil (Gemini X), a GTL oil (Diala S4 ZX-I) and a synthetic ester (MIDEL 7131). A circuit arrangement in compliance with the IEC 60270 was used, which allowed PD measurements, wide-band current measurements and streamer shadowgraphs to be obtained simultaneously. To simulate the quasi-uniform electric fields in transformers, a plane-to-plane electrode system incorporating an adjustable needle protrusion (PNP) was employed. A needle-to-plane electrode system (NP), which is widely used in the field, was also employed to provide reference results. Based on the PD measurement results, the PD inception fields (PDIFs) of the three liquids were found to be independent of electrode geometry for the investigated tip radius. The PDIF of the synthetic ester is about 13% lower than that of the mineral oil or the GTL oil. Compared with the PD magnitude, the pulse repetition rate is more sensitive to liquid type. At the same voltage under both the NP and PNP configurations, the synthetic ester has the highest pulse repetition rate, followed by the GTL oil, and then the mineral oil. In divergent electric fields (provided by the NP electrode system), it was found that the streamers in the three liquids have a similar stopping length at the same voltage, even though the apparent charge readings are not the same. The correlations between PD and streamer characteristics indicated that the synthetic ester has the highest branching tendency, and has therefore the smallest stopping length per unit of apparent charge among the three liquids. In quasi-uniform electric fields (provided by the PNP electrode system), the streamer branching tendencies of the three liquids were largely suppressed. The change from a propagation-induced breakdown in divergent fields to an initiation-induced breakdown in quasi-uniform fields was explained. The correlations between PD and streamer characteristics revealed that the same apparent charge can indicate different levels of streamer development in the insulation, depending on the uniformity of the electric field. Overall, interpreting PD measurement results needs to take the electric field uniformity (PD location) as well as liquid type into consideration.

abstract: This thesis focuses on the influence of a grounded back electrode on the breakdown characteristics. The back electrode is an electrode which attaches at the back side of solid insulation. Insulation with grounded back electrode is a common type of insulation which is adopted in many high voltage power devices. While most of the power equipment work under AC voltage, most of the research on back electrode is focused on the DC voltage. Therefore, it is necessary to deeply investigate the influence of the back electrode under AC applied voltage. To investigate the influence of back electrode, the research is separated into two phases, which are the experiment phase and the electric field analysis phase. In the experiments, the breakdown voltages for both with and without back electrode are obtained. The experimental results indicate that the grounded back electrode does have impact on the breakdown characteristics. Then with the breakdown voltage, based on real experiment model, the electric field is analyzed using computer software. From the field simulation result, it is found that the back electrode also influences the electric field distribution. The inter relationship between the electric field and breakdown voltage is the key to explain all the results and phenomena observed during the experiment. Additionally, the influence of insulation barrier on breakdown is also investigated. Compared to the case without ground electrode, inserting a barrier into the gap can more significantly improve breakdown voltage. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Electrical Engineering 2014

No description available.