The 20th International Symposium on High Voltage Engineering, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 27 – September 01, 2017

ONLINE OIL MONITORING ON POWER TRANSFORMERS-

INVESTIGATIONS ON TECHNICAL AND ECONOMICAL REQUIREMENTS -

M. T. Imani1*, P. Werle1, A. Kurz2, J. Schuebel 2

1
Leibniz Universität Hannover, Institute of Electric Power Systems,
Division of High Voltage Engineering and Asset Management, Schering-Institute,
Callinstr. 25A, 30167 Hannover, Germany
2
Messko GmbH, Messko-Platz 1, D-61440 Oberursel, Germany
*Email: <imani@ifes.uni-hannover.de>

Abstract: Today many online oil monitoring systems are available on the market,
covering a huge range from low cost single-parameter detection systems up to costly
multi-parameter analysers. Therefore, it needs to be decided case by case which system
fits best to specific technical and economical requirements, which is often not a
straightforward task, because various economical and technical aspects need to be
considered.
Therefore extensive investigations have been performed on different fluids in order to
verify, which parameters need to be determined in which accuracy by a technical and
economical reasonable online oil monitoring system. For these investigations diverse
common faults have been simulated in a conventional insulating liquid. For each fault
mode, the key gases have been determined, thus based on a key-gas evaluation the
minimum number and accuracy of parameters could be defined, which are needed in
order to identify the failure unambiguously. For the investigations the oil parameters have
been determined using a high precision laboratory measurement equipment, and
simultaneously a 3-parameter-detection online system has been used, in order to verify
the potential of such online monitoring systems to detect malfunction of insulation
systems inside power transformers.
The performed investigations show that online oil monitoring systems have in general the
capability to identify different failures in power transformers, thus measures can be
initiated in time in order to prevent a breakdown. Based on the results described in this
contribution it is possible to decide, which oil online monitoring system should be chosen
under specific technical and economical requirements. Furthermore the results lead to a
recommendation, which oil parameters should be detected and evaluated by an
economically optimized online monitoring system.

1 INTRODUCTION general the gas molecules could be dissolved in

Mineral oil is a blend of complex hydrocarbon
groups like CH, CH2 and CH3. Under thermal,
electrical and chemical stresses the hydrocarbon
chains consists of C-C bonds or C-H bonds are
randomly cleaved and free-radicals can be
generated. As these fragments are very unstable
chemical products in essence, they tend to couple
to one another swiftly. Linkage of long chain
compounds results in production of heavy
hydrocarbons, which are appeared as solid aging
by-products such as x-wax on the active part of
transformers or precipitate as sedimentation on the
tank bottom of transformers. Besides, by
connection of short-chain free-radicals hydrogen
(H-H) or light hydrocarbons gases will be
generated like methane (CH3-H), ethane (CH3-
CH3), ethylene (CH2=CH2) and acetylene (CH≡CH).
Furthermore carbon-oxide gas molecules are
formed in addition, because of the decomposition
of cellulose insulation, but CO (C≡O) and CO2
(O=C=O) could also be produced by degradation
of the liquid insulation [1] or could be originated
from the atmosphere up to a certain extend. In
the oil or diffuse into the atmosphere for free
breathing transformation or into a gas cushion for
these kind of sealed transformers. Gas generation
in oil is a complex phenomenon and depends on a
wide spectrum of parameters from oil composition
to fault types. The type and amount of the
generated gases are governed mainly by fault
temperature or energy and fault duration as well.
As for example acetylene is generated at elevated
temperatures, this means that the presence of this
gas could be an indicator of a high energy faults.
Accordingly, every fault shows to somewhat a
specified gassing pattern. In this way, the amount,
rate and ratio of gases could be employed to
classify the fault mode and severity.
Oil filled power transformers belong to the most
important and expensive components in electrical
energy grids [2-3]. Therefore it is of special interest
to monitor their condition during operation in order
to identify critical conditions before a serious failure
can occur. Such failures often lead to enormous
costs not only due to the outage of the transformer
itself, but also due to consequential costs like loss
of energy supply, loss of production, etc. To
prevent this worst case scenario, effective online
monitoring systems are needed, which are usually
based on the detection of different physico-
chemical parameters, mainly dissolved gases often
combined with the determination of the moisture
content of the insulation liquid. The dissolved gas
analysis (DGA) can indicate an active failure inside
the transformer according to standards like IEC
60599 or IEEE C57.104, whereas moisture content
can indicate a low breakdown voltage of the oil [4
and 5].
This contribution aims at determining the key
gases formed by typical faults in power
transformers. Besides, an online monitoring
system is subject of these investigations in order to
study its potential for performing a reliable
condition assessment of the power transformer.
2 EXPRIMENTAL PROCEDURE
The faults in power transformers or generally in oil
filled high voltage components can be categorized
to electrical or thermal faults or a combination of
both of them. A fault could be initiated due to an
imperfection inside the insulation system during the
manufacturing process or as a consequence of an
abnormality during operation or as a consequence
of aged insulation. Fault generation and
progression are depending on many factors. Some
of them extinguish shortly after appearance like
some sort of partial discharges, which are initiated
by over-voltages and the others could develop
swiftly and metastatically spread up and result in
irreversible degradation of the insulation. In this
attempt thermal and electrical faults with different
temperatures and energies were simulated.
For the investigations, the uninhibited mineral oil
Shell S2 ZU-I is used. Before each experiment, the
insulating fluid is degassed and dehydrated.
A closed test set-up, as depicted in Figure 1, .was
used in order to represent sealed transformers,
which are typically sold today, thus a loss of gases
by breathing has not to be considered.
Figure 1: Test vessel for simulation of electrical
and/or thermal faults integrated with the
3-parameter measurement system
MSense x2.5
Into this set-up the DGA online monitoring system
MSense x2.5 was integrated, which can detect
hydrogen, carbon-monoxide as well as the
moisture content of the liquid insulation. A lot of
care has been paid for sampling of the liquid
sample complying with recommendations provided
by [6]. For each experiment, sampling was
performed two times and the mean values were
taken as gas concentration. A full vacuum
degassing system is used for analysing the
samples.
The measured gases are always normalized
regarding the gas with the highest concentration in
order to have a visual representation, which allows
a fast and easy identification of the key or main
gases for each failure type.
3 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
3.1 PARTIAL DISCHARGES
Partial discharges (PD) are conducting pathways,
which bridges two electrodes partially for a short
duration. They are initiated due to locally
intensified electric field. The source of partial
discharges can be e.g. voids or impurities in liquid
or solid insulations, which can lead to a breakdown
if the PDs are not detected in time.
The PD-fault in oil is generated by placing an
aramid pressboard between a needle-plate
electrode configuration. The needle electrode has
a diameter of 1 mm and radius of 3 µm made from
stainless steel. The earth electrode is a brass plate
with diameter of 50 mm. The applied ac voltage is
increased to achieve an almost stable partial
discharge value of more than 1 nC and keeping it
for 4 h, thus the gas concentrations shown in Fig. 2
have been achieved, with the key gases hydrogen
and methane. Using the laboratory measurement
system 2050 ppm hydrogen and 2 ppm carbon-
monoxide was detected, whereas the MSense x2.5
shows 1995 ppm hydrogen and 4 ppm carbon-
monoxide dissolved in the mineral oil.
Figure 2: Normalized gas concentrations after
partial discharge stress

3.2 ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES
Sparking occurs due to malfunction of insulation
system under high electric field. They leave
permanent destruction on cellulose insulation and
adversely change the insulation oil properties.
Transformer with this incipient fault is in imminent
danger of an outage. Arcing discharges having
plasma core by a temperature about several
thousand degrees generate a considerable amount
of acetylene and hydrogen. Furthermore, arcing
could produce a significant amount of undissolved
gases.
To determine the emerging gases by electrical
discharges, impulse discharges with a peak of
60 kV and energy of 21.6 W.s are applied 30 times
to the treated oil sample. The measured gas
contents and presented in Fig. 3 and show that
considerable amounts of hydrogen and acetylene
have been generates. Besides, small amount of
ethylene and methane could also be detected. In
laboratory 2 ppm CO and 107 ppm H2 dissolved in
oil could be detected, whereas 5 ppm CO and
98 ppm H2 are measured by the MSense.
Figure 3: Normalized gas concentrations after
electrical discharges
Figure 4: Normalized gas concentrations after
electrical discharges with high energy
In order to generate high energy discharge faults,
the amplitude of impulse discharges were
increased to 170 kV and 173.4 W.s and repeated
35 times. The gap distance between high voltage
and earth electrode is adjusted by 10 mm. The
normalized gas concentration is presented in
Fig. 4.
Every discharge is accompanied with considerable
formation of undissolved gases and carbon traces.
As could be expected, the key gases for this fault
are acetylene and hydrogen and the ratio of
acetylene to hydrogen could estimate the severity
of the fault.
3.3 LOCAL OVERHEATING (HOTSPOT)
Hotspot (T<300 oC)
The over loading of transformers leads to rising
temperatures, but hotspots could also stem from
higher eddy currents within the iron core or
transformer tank or be due to bad contact between
conductors. The type and concentration of gases is
governed by the temperature.
A resistor, through which a constant current flows,
has been employed to generate local overheating
inside the oil. The current is adjusted to have a
constant temperature of 250 oC and keeping it for
3 h. As during this time duration the temperature of
whole sample could increase, the wall of oil
container was cooled down by immersing it into a
thermostatic water bath with regulated temperature
of 20 oC.
Fig. 5 shows the pattern of gassing, which reveals
that methane is the key gas for this mode of fault.
Moreover, a significant amount of propane and
propene is released leading us to the conclusion
that it could be an important marker for local
thermal aging of mineral oil.
Figure 5: Normalized gas concentrations for a
hotspot with 250 oC
Using a GC measurement system, gas
concentrations of 7 and 10 ppm for carbon-
monoxide and hydrogen respectively are
measured, which is comparble with those values
determined by MSense x2.5: 11 ppm carbon-
monoxide and 12 ppm hydrogen.
Hotspot (300 oC<T<700 oC)
In order to produce the local thermal fault in oil with
a temperature between 300 and 700 oC, the
current is increased to have a temperature of
approx. 600 oC on the surface of resistor for 5
minutes. As the thermal stress lasts just for few
minutes no cooling of the oil vessel is necessary.
During the thermal stress formation of remarkable
amount of bubbles could be observed.
Figure 6: Normalized gas concentrations for a
hotspot with 600 oC
As seen in Fig. 6, the pattern of gassing unfolds
this fact that hotspot with this temperature could
result in production of fault gases methane,
propene and ethylene. Compared to the thermal
fault lower than 300 oC, the ratio of concentration
of propene to methane is substantially raised.
Hotspot (T>700 oC)
The current was adjusted to achieve a temperature
of 800 oC on the surface of resistor for 30 seconds,
which was accompanied by releasing of a large
amount of undissolved gases.
Figure 7: Normalized gas concentrations for a
hotspot with 800 oC
As the relative percentage of generated gases in
Fig. 7 shows, propene is produced more than other
fault gases. It could be hereupon an indicator for
thermal fault in insulating fluid. Meanwhile, a high
concentration of ethylene could be measured,
which is usually considered as the key gas for
hotspot presence in oil.
3.4 Combined Thermal/Electrical Fault
Thermal and electrical faults could occur
simultaneously in power transformers dependently
or independently from each other. To recognize the
pattern of this fault, the dehydrated oil sample is
subjected to thermal stress at an elevated
temperature of 600 oC for 5 minutes. Afterwards,
the oil sample is submitted to 30 impulse
discharges with an amplitude of 60 kV, thus the
gases shown in Fig. 8 have been produced.
As seen in Fig. 8, the main dissolved gas is
propene, which is accompanied by significant
generation of ethylene, methane and hydrogen.
Besides, trace of acetylene could be detected,
which is produced as a consequence of electrical
discharges. It could also be noticed that here
propene and acetylene could be employed as
indicators of thermal and electrical faults,
correspondingly. By dissolved gas measurement
2 ppm CO and 144 ppm hydrogen were detected.
In comparison, the online measurement system
MSense x2.5 could sense 4 ppm CO and 156 ppm
H2.
Figure 8: Normalized gas concentrations after
combined thermal/electrical stress
Comparing Figures 3, 6 and 8, it becomes obvious
that Figure 8 is a kind of superposition of Figure 3
and 6, thus the chosen representation of failure
gases can be used to simple identify key gases
from single and mixed faults.
Thermal aging of paper
Cellulose insulations undergo an accelerated aging
process at elevated temperatures with the
presence of moisture and oxygen. In this attempt,
kraft paper samples are impregnated with
processed uninhibited mineral oils separately.
Afterwards, three groups of samples for each type
of oil were prepared: pure oil sample, oil sample
with catalysts and an oil sample with paper and
catalysts. Usual present metals in power
transformer i.e. aluminium, iron, brass and copper
in the form of fine particles each 3 g/l are
incorporated in oil to catalyse the aging process.
The usual cellulose/oil weight ratio of 1/10 was
chosen, as a typical value. All samples were put in
an open stainless steel breakers and submitted to
thermal stress at 120 oC.
Dissolved gas analysis was performed after 72 h
and 144 h. The normalized concentration of the
produced gases is presented in Fig. 9. It could be
noticed that both catalysts and paper have
significant influence on production of carbon-
oxides molecules.
Figure 9: Normalized gas concentrations after
72 h ageing
The amount of dissolved gases after 144 h can be
seen in Fig. 10. Paper and metallic particles could
enhance the production of CO and CO2 after 144 h
in the same way as shown after 72 h, seen in Fig.
9.
Figure 10: Normalized gas concentrations after
144 h ageing
3.5 WATER CONTENT
Water could be found in insulating liquid of power
transformers as a result of aging of cellulose
insulation or due to the moisture ingress in oil from
the atmosphere. This chemical compound could
adversely accelerate the aging rate of the both
solid and liquid insulation. Furthermore, this
deteriorates breakdown withstand strength of
insulating liquid. Therefore, it is of prominent
importance to monitor the moisture content of the
insulating oil. The online monitoring system
MSense x2.5 is equipped with a capacitive sensor
to measure the relative water content of oil.
In this study another capacitive humidity sensor
Vaisala HM70, which has been formerly calibrated,
was integrated to the test setup to compare the
results measured by MSense x2.5 with those of the
Vaisala HM70.
The measurement of the relative water content
was performed for oils with three different relative
humidities of 4%, 12% and 33% measured by
Vaisala HM70. Correspondingly those values are
measured by MSense x2.5 5%, 14% and 37%,
which shows a good agreement with those
determined values by the capacitive humidity
sensor Vaisala HM70.
4 DISCUSSION
The investigations show that using an intelligent
representation of dissolved gases a simple
identification of key gases and therefore of the
failure type is possible, even if failures are
combined. Furthermore it could have been shown,
that actual available DGA online monitoring
systems are quite accurate.
Regarding the gassing behaviour of the
investigated insulating oil under different fault
modes, the question which key-gases should be
measured could be answered as follows:
For a 2-key gas system hydrogen should be
detected in combination with
 carbon-monoxide, thus a statement about both
active failure and paper ageing
or
 methane, thus a statement about the type of the
failure – electrical or thermal –
becomes possible.
For a 3-key gas system beside the above
mentioned gases acetylene could be measured in
order to differentiate between high and low
intensity faults.
For a 4-key gas system: hydrogen, methane,
acetylene and CO seems to be the best
combination, because it might allow a statement
concerning the type and severity of the failure as
well as about the question if paper is involved in
the failure or degraded.
For a 5-key gas system the measurement of
ethylene could be helpful for a better discrimination
between thermal faults with different temperature
ranges.
IEEE Elect. Insul. Mag., vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 21–
27, Jul./Aug. 2005
[4] IEC 60599, “Mineral oil-impregnated electrical
equipment in service-guide to the interpretation
of dissolved and free gases analysis”, 2015
[5] IEEE C57.104 “Guide for the interpretation of
gases generated in oil immersed transformers”,
2008

If more gases should be measured more fault [6] IEC 60567, “Oil-filled electrical equipment —
gases and/or CO2 as well as oxygen and nitrogen Sampling of gases and of oil for analysis of
can lead to a more precise statement. However, free and dissolved gases — Guidance”, IEC
certainly this will increase the costs of such a standard, 2005
system and if a monitoring system gives an alarm
[7] P. Werle, D. Bonmann “Monitoring und
– independent if 2 or 9 key gases are monitored –
Diagnose von Leistungstransformatoren zur
usually the same procedure will start, which is to
Optimierung zustandsbasierter Instandhal-
take an oil sample for analysing it in the lab [7].
tungsstrategien“ ETG-Fachtagung, Diagnostik
Therefore, in general a low cost system like a 2
elektrischer Betriebsmittel, Köln, März 2004
key-gas system seems to be preferable. However,
if more information should be achieved at the same
time a 5-key gas sensor maybe in addition with a
moisture sensor might be a good compromise
between costs and technical informative value.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Power transformers are the costliest assets within

the power system grid, thus it is highly demanded
to monitor the condition of power transformers
online, through which incipient faults could be
detected in time. Especially DGA monitoring
systems could convey wealthy information about
the condition of power transformers [6].

The performed investigations show that even

online DGA systems considering less key gases
are quite accurate and reliable, thus a 2-key gas
system is preferable from an economic point of
view, because monitoring more key gases results
in an increased cost-price.

Using normalized gas-concentration-graphs enable

a simple and easy fault identification even in cases
in which more than one failure occur, thus this
representation of failure gases could be helpful
even for untrained staff to get a first impression
about the transformer condition.

REFERENCES
[1] I. Fofana, M. T. Imani M. Farahani, E.
Gockenbach and H. Borsi, “Influence of
Transformer Oil aging by-products on the
dissolved gas analysis”, 18th International
Symposium on High Voltage Engineering,
Seoul Korea, August 2013
[2] M. Duval, "A review of faults detectable by gas-
in-oil analysis in transformers”, Electrical
Insulation Magazine, IEEE, vol. 18, pp. 8-17,
2002
[3] M. Duval and J. Dukarm, “Improving the
reliability of transformer gas-in-oil diagnosis,”