1
Determination of Transformer Health Condition
Using Artificial Neural Networks
Ahmed E. B. Abu-Elanien, Student Member, IEEE, M. M. A. Salama, Fellow, IEEE, and Malak Ibrahim
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON, Canada
Abstract—This paper presents a method to estimate a
transformer health condition based on diagnostic tests. A feed
forward artificial neural network (FFANN) is used to find the
health index of the transformer. The health index is used to find
the health condition of the transformer. The training of the
FFANN is done using real measurements of 59 working
transformers. The testing of the trained neural network
performance is done using real data for 29 working transformers.
The performance evaluation of the trained FFANN shows that
the trained neural network is reliable in finding the health
condition of any working transformer.
Keywords-component; Asset management; condition
monitoring; dissolved gas analysis ; health condition; health index;
furans analysis; transformer.
I. INTRODUCTION
In today's competitive energy market, power utilities wish
to have sustainable operation of all assets with minimum cost
of the existing equipment over their life span. The current
trend is to utilize existing equipment at ever-higher capacity
levels in order to defer the capital investment in new facilities
or in refurbishment of the existing facilities [1].
Power transformers have the single highest value of the
equipment installed in high-voltage substations, comprising up
to 60% of total investment [2]. They also occupy large portion
of the investments in the distribution level. Deployment of
new transformers is costly and may not be justified in terms of
the utility bottom line. [1]. Most power utilities have a
growing demand for extending the lifetime of their fleets of
transformers by improving their financial and technical
performances [2]. One important aspect that allows power
utilities to enhance the financial and technical performances of
power transformer is the knowledge of transformer health
condition. Health condition is important to improve reliability
and assist in determining appropriate asset management
decisions benefits, enable operators to develop effective
maintenance and replacement strategies based on the condition
of the transformer, identify transformers that could benefit
from life extension measures [3].
The purpose of asset condition assessment is to detect and
quantify long-term degradation and to provide a means of
quantifying remaining asset life [4]. Assets that are at or near
end-of-life or at high risk of failure can be identified to save
978-1-61284-922-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 Crown
require major capital expenditures to either refurbish or
replace the assets.
Insufficient research work is presented to evaluate the
health condition of a transformer. In [2, 5], clear steps are
given to calculated the health index of a power transformer.
However, the methods presented in [2, 5] ignored important
measurement in assessing the health index, which is the
amount of total solids in the transformer oil. Amount of total
solids is a good indication about the condition of the insulation
system of the transformer. Further, they give the
measurements of total furans less weight than other less
important factors such as the winding resistance and oil
quality during the calculation of the health index. It is known
that the amount of furans is an important indication to the
degree of polymerization of the solid insulation. The
degradation of solid insulation (paper) can be considered the
primary reason for a transformer end of life [6-10]. The work
done in [1] includes all parameters affect the health of the
transformer; however, the paper did not reveal the method
used in the calculation of the health index. The total furan in
the transformer oil is ignored in the method presented in [11].
Further, no case studies are given to illustrate the method.
The main aim of this paper is to use the artificial neural
network to evaluate the health index of a transformer using
real measurements from working transformers. The calculated
health index is used to evaluate the health condition of the
transformer. In order to find the health index, the author used
real data from the field. The diagnostic tests data are taken
from distribution systems of an industrial installation in the
Middle East. This company commissioned a specialized in
Asset Management Health Assessment (AMHA) at UK to
derive and populate a health index for the distribution
transformers located on their electric system. To facilitate this,
AMHA undertook a sampling and test program for 90 oil
filled transformers. The provided data are the water content,
acidity, break down voltage (BDV), hydrogen content (H2),
methane content (CH4), ethylene content (C2H4), Acetylene
content (C2H2), furans content, loss factor, and total solids in
oil for each transformer. The health indices of all transformers
calculated by AMHA are also given.
Measuring moisture, acidity, solid contamination and
breakdown strength of the oil gives a good indication of the
overall condition of the oil and internal components. The
quality of the oil is also critical in preventing premature ageing

of the transformer and extending service life. Moreover,
Furfuraldehyde (furans) analysis gives a highly accurate
indication of the condition of paper insulation. The furans
content is correlated to the degree of polymerisation of the
paper [12, 13]. When furans levels reach specific values, we
know that the insulation has effectively broken down and the
probability of failure is very high. Furthermore, analysing the
levels of different dissolved gases in the oil identifies
electrical discharge, arcing and thermal activity within the
transformer.
The method of calculating the heath index is considered as
a secret and it is not provided in the final report presented to
the industrial installation. The values of the AMHA health
index ranges between zero and ten. A value of zero of the
health index means a brand new transformer. A value of ten of
the health index means the transformer should be replaced. In
between zero and ten of the health index, the condition of the
transformer can be good, moderate, or bad. The condition of
the transformer is considered to be good for health indices
from zero to 4, the condition of the transformer is considered
to be moderate for health indices from 4 to 7, and the
condition of the transformer is considered to be bad for health
indices from 7 to 10. In this paper FFANN is used to find the
relation between the 11 data categories and the health index of
each transformer with the aid of the health indices given by
AMHA.
II. METHOD CONCEPTS
Artificial intelligence is the study of systems that act in a
way that to any observer would appear to be intelligent [14].
One of the most important artificial intelligence branches is
the Artificial Neural Network (ANN). ANN is an information
processing paradigm that is inspired by the biological nervous
systems in human brain [14]. The key element of this
paradigm is the novel structure of the information processing
system. ANN has a remarkable ability to derive meaning from
complicated or imprecise data. They can be used to extract
patterns and detect trends that are too complex to be noticed
by either humans or other computer techniques. A trained
neural network can be thought of as an "expert" in the
category of information it has been given to analyze. This
expert can then be used to provide projections given new
situations of interest and answer "what if" questions.
The artificial neural network (ANN) is used to estimate the
health index of a transformer. The available data for the 88
transformers are used to train a feed forward artificial neural
network (FFANN) to be able to find the health index of a
transformer.
The given data should be preprocessed first before using
them. The main aim here is to adjust the given data to be ready
for analysis. The elements that contain irregular data should be
removed. These irregular data include too high attributes,
negative or corrupted attributes. Further, all data are
normalized according to their respective maximum. In the
regard of irregular data, elements 76 and 31 of the available
data seem to be irregular and should be eliminated. This is
because the amount of total furans of element 76 is too high
2
Fig. 1. FFANN configuration.
and the loss angle of element 31 is too high. These very high
inputs may affect the remaining values of the same category
when we perform the normalization. The next step in the pre-
processing stage is the normalization of all data categories by
dividing all elements of each data category by their respective
maximum. The given health indices are normalized too by
dividing all entries of health indices by their maximum.
The available measurements for the 88 transformers are
divided into two sets: training set and testing set. The training
set consists of the data for 59 transformers selected randomly
from the available data for the 88 transformers (67% of the
available data). The testing set consists of the data for the
remaining 29 transformers (33% of the available data).
A four-layer FFANN is used to estimate the health index
of the transformers. The FFANN is shown in Fig. 1. The
neural network consists of one input layer, one output layer,
and two hidden layers. The input layer consists of 11 neurons;
the inputs to the input layer are the data of the 88 transformers.
The output layer consists of one neuron representing the health
index for the transformer under study. The output layer neuron
has output in the range of zero to one: zero represents a brand
new transformer and one represents a transformer in a very
bad condition and it should be replaced. With respect to the
hidden layers, it is customary that the selection of the number
of neurons in the hidden layers is selected by trial and error.
The authors used the same approach in the proposed
algorithm. The number of hidden layers is found to be two
with four neurons in the first hidden layer and two neurons in
the second hidden layer.
A comparison between the given health index for the 59
transformers used in the training of FFANN and the FFANN
output health index for the training set is shown in Fig. 2. It is
clear from Fig. 2 that the output of the FFANN is very close to
the original health index of the training set of transformers.
The trained FFANN is tested using the testing set which
includes 29 transformers. The given health index of the testing
set and the output of the FFANN for the testing set are shown
 3

0.9

0.8 FFANN output health index

for the training set

0.7

0.6 Original health index

Health index for the training set
0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Transformer number

Fig. 2. The given health index for the 59 transformers used in the training of FFANN and the FFANN output health index for the same training set.

0.9 FFANN output health index

for the testing set
0.8

0.7
Health index

0.6 Original health index

for the testing set

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Transformer number

Fig. 3. The given health index for the 29 transformers used in the testing of FFANN and the FFANN output health index for the same testing set.

in Fig. 3. Fig. 3 shows that the estimated health indices for the
testing set are numerically close to the given health indices of
the same set. Table I shows the given health indices for the
testing set and the corresponding output of the FFANN.
III. DISCUSSION
The condition of the transformer is the main goal of the
investigation. In this regard, the trained FFANN can classify
the conditions of the transformers with excellent accuracy.
The estimated and target health indices of the testing set of
transformers shown in Table II are converted into health
conditions (good, moderate, or bad) according to the
aforementioned criteria. Table III depicts the accuracy of the
FFANN classifier based on the health condition criteria.
The FFANN classifier is able to classify correctly 28 cases
of the 29 test cases with accuracy of 96.55%. Moreover, with a
quick look at Table I, we can found that the incorrectly
classified case is case 5. The calculated and given health
indices of case 5 are 0.45 and 0.334 respectively. The given
health index indicates that the transformer is at the end of the
good condition zone and the calculated health index indicates
that the transformer is in the beginning of the moderate
condition. This means that the two outputs are not far from
each other.
Analyzing the transformers’ data with bad conditions, which
are the most important ones, we can find that the furans
content of all of them is more than 5 ppm. The furans content
of five of them are more than 6.5 ppm, which means that the
degree of polymerization is less than 200 units [12].
Moreover, the majority of the transformers with bad
conditions have high total solids contamination and acidity
level, and medium-high water content in the oil samples.
Furthermore, the loss factor of all of them is higher than
0.15%, which is considered above the safe limit. This data
analysis proves that the evaluation of the transformers 3, 8, 20,
21, 22, 23, and 24 as transformers in bad condition was
correct.
 4

Table I
Given health indices for the testing set and the corresponding output of the FFANN
Transformer Given health FFANN output Transformer Given FFANN output
number index health index number health index health index
1 0.226 0.224 16 0.226 0.199
2 0.322 0.261 17 0.387 0.259
3 0.772 0.813 18 0.29 0.269
4 0.377 0.398 19 0.316 0.337
5 0.334 0.45 20 1 0.94
6 0.29 0.19 21 0.931 0.931
7 0.29 0.367 22 1 0.939
8 0.701 0.81 23 0.916 0.937
9 0.381 0.129 24 0.732 0.8156
10 0.102 0.323 25 0.354 0.271
11 0.274 0.189 26 0.45 0.535
12 0.316 0.245 27 0.414 0.432
13 0.29 0.264 28 0.291 0.339
14 0.316 0.241 29 0.414 0.4467
15 0.29 0.214

Table II
The output transformer condition of the FFANN and the target conditions of the transformer testing set.
Transformer FFANN output Transformer Given FFANN output
Given health condition
number health condition number health condition health condition
1 good good 16 good good
2 good good 17 good good
3 bad bad 18 good good
4 good good 19 good good
5 good moderate 20 bad bad
6 good good 21 bad bad
7 good good 22 bad bad
8 bad bad 23 bad bad
9 good good 24 bad bad
10 good good 25 good good
11 good good 26 moderate moderate
12 good good 27 moderate moderate
13 good good 28 good good
14 good good 29 moderate moderate
15 good good

Table III The trained FFANN can be used to find the health index of
Accuracy of the FFANN classifier with respect to the any transformer. In order to find the health index of any
transformer condition transformer, the 11 aforementioned measurements for any
good moderate bad total transformer are fed into the trained FFANN after
normalization using the same standards. The output of the
good 18 1 0 19 FFANN is the health index of the transformer under study.
moderate 0 3 0 3 The health condition of the transformer can be evaluated using
the health index by applying the conversion rules stated in the
bad 0 0 7 7 introduction.
IV. CONCLUSION
The usage of artificial neural network in the evaluation of a
transformer health index is presented in this paper. Real

Measurements of 90 working transformers are used for the
purpose. The provided measurements include water content,
acidity, break down voltage, hydrogen content, methane
content, ethylene content, Acetylene content, furans content,
loss factor, and total solids in oil for each transformer. The
given health index evaluated by AMHA is used to train the
FFANN. The health index calculated by the neural network is
used to evaluate the health condition of 33% testing set of the
available data. The evaluated health conditions of the testing
set show similar results as the results of AMHA except for one
transformer.
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