Power transformers are essential apparatuses used to transfer electrical energy from one voltage-level circuit to another. For reliable systems, preventive maintenance of the transformers is required to ensure good services of all mechanical, electrical, and insulation parts. Oil-immersed paper is most often used for transformer insulation. To ensure such good insulation performance and for assessing insulation conditions, advanced transformer sensing, monitoring, and effective assessment techniques are required. This paper introduces an effective technique for assessing the insulation conditions in power transformers, which are crucial for ensuring reliable energy transfer. The method utilizes advanced transformer sensing and monitoring, focusing on oil-immersed paper insulation commonly used in transformers. The technique employs dielectric response sensing, obtained from frequency-domain spectroscopy tests, to estimate degrees of polymerization (DP) and percentages of moisture content (PMCs) in the oil-immersed paper insulation. These parameters are well-known indicators of insulation performance. The approach is based on the weighted k-nearest neighbor regression, using a database of dielectric loss factors at low frequency and oil conductivities. To overcome limited data availability, linear interpolation and extrapolation techniques are applied to enlarge the database. Experimental verification and comparison with a previously developed method demonstrate the proposed technique’s superiority in accuracy and complexity. The maximum deviations of DP and PMC in the validation cases are 6.2% and 18.7%, respectively. In addition, to evaluate the validity of our proposed method in the case of a real power transformer, a comparative analysis of the DP and PMC values determined by the proposed method with those obtained through a previously developed and complicated approach was performed. The predicted results indicate that the DP and PMC values of the oil-immersed insulation fall within the ranges of 800 to 1000 and 1.5 to 2.0, respectively, which agree with the results determined by the complicated approach and closely align with real conditions. By offering a reliable and advanced means of assessing insulation conditions, this technique contributes to the preventive maintenance and overall efficiency of power transformers.

This paper presents application of a resonant power frequency converter for high-voltage (HV) and partial discharge (PD) test of a voltage transformer. The rating voltage, power, and frequency of the system are 70 kV_rms, 40 kVA, and 200 Hz, respectively. The testing system utilized the converter feeding to an HV testing transformer connected to a conventional partial discharge detection system. The converter system comprising a rectifier and insulated-gate bipolar (IGBT) switches with the H-bridge configuration was applied as a low-voltage source instead of a conventional motor-generator test set which requires large space and high cost. The requirements of the test according to the standards are quality of the test voltage and the background noise level. The required voltage must have the different voltage (DV) and total harmonic distortion (THD_v) in the acceptable values of less than 5%. The DV is defined as the difference of the root mean square and peak voltages in percent. The required background noise level must be lower than 2.5 pC. Simulations and experiments were performed for verification of the developed system performance in comparison with those of the previously developed system based on the pulse width modulation converter. It is found that the developed system can provide the testing voltage with the DV and the THD_v of lower than 1% and the background noise level of lower than 1 pC. Considering this achievement of promising performance, the developed system is an attractive choice for the HV and PD testing of voltage transformers in real practice.

This paper proposes an equivalent circuit of grounding electrode which has validity upto a frequency range of sub-sequence stroke lightning current. The equivalent circuit is modelled by lumped and distributed parameters based on quasistatic assumption. In this study, only a grounding electrode installed horizontally is in consideration. The limitation of the uniform distributed equivalent circuit of a grounding electrode is presented. The non-uniform distributed equivalent circuit is proposed. The proposed equivalent circuits are verified by comparison of the results of ground potential rise computed by the proposed circuit, the partial element equivalent circuit method, and available experimental data. The proposed equivalent circuit can be adapted for being the models for development and design of the grounding system for lightning protection system in transmission and distribution systems in an effective way.

This paper introduces a statistical classification in regression model to classify partial discharge (PD) patterns into four categories in corona: high voltage side in air, corona at low voltage side in air, surface in air, and internal discharge. There are nine independent variables from fingerprint analysis which mainly are skewness, kurtosis, asymmetry and cross correlation following Phi - q - n PD patterns. The variable independent data are divided into two group: the forms for training the model and the pattern for test the model. The created algorithm investigates the best of parameter group from all of independence variables for creating the regression model. In this work, the group of five best parameters for classification are selected. The results show, that only five parameters in the model has a good performance to classify PD pattern with the classification accuracy of 100%.

The well-known circuit for the generation of lightning impulse voltage (LIV) on low-inductance loads was introduced by Glaninger in 1975, and the circuit component selection was proposed by Feser. However, the circuit and the approach for the component selection have some difficulties for which further adjustment is required for obtaining the waveform parameters according to the standard requirement. In this paper, an extended Glaninger’s circuit with an additional series resistor is proposed. Furthermore, a systematic design and circuit analysis of LIV generation for low-inductance loads are developed. With the help of a circuit simulator, the circuit analysis for the component selection is described. The validity of the proposed circuit was confirmed by some experimental results in comparison with the simulated ones. The proposed circuit and component selection provide not only the generation waveform according to the standard requirement but also other promising performances in terms of the wide inductance load range from 400 μH to 4 mH, a voltage efficiency of over 80%, an overshoot voltage of below 5%, an undershoot voltage of below 40%, and a maximum charging capacitance of 10 μF. From the simulated and experimental results, the proposed circuit and component selection approach is very useful for the LIV tests on low-inductance loads instead of using the conventional approach based on trial and error.