Answer to Tutorial 5

1)

 The disruption to the power supply to the customer might happen as the equipment should
be taken out of service.
 The off-line test condition might not be able to be the exact duplication of in-service stresses
which could be the combination of electrical, thermal, mechanical and environmental
stresses.
 As the equipment has to be taken out of service at certain interval, continuing monitoring
during the normal operation is not possible. Some failures (or the onset of failures) could be
missed which have happened between two consecutive off-line test.
 As the equipment has to be taken out of service, the off-line test could be costly and also
time-consuming. Additionally, health and safety issues may raise.

2)

 As the on-line assessment is carried out in service conditions, the presence of surrounding
noises could be challenging in extracting the useful information.

 The fact that the on-line test may not be able to be performed in a fully-controlled condition
can cause the measurement not to be as accurate as off-line tests.

 Development and manufacturing the instrument to be used on-line can be more expensive.

3)

A gate is being controlled by a triggering circuit. (An example could be an antenna which is placed
close-by a known source of interference and – usually via a BNC cable - connected to a dedicated
input port of the PD meter.) when the noise is detected the gate will be opened which will
deactivate the PD measurements for a given amount of time (1-50 microsecond).

4)

• Noise-gating,

• differential circuits (balanced or polarity discxrmination circuits)

• directional circuits,

• fibre-optic sensors,

• VHF/UHF sensors

5)

Partial discharge in any test object under given condition may be characterized by different
measurable quantities like charge, repetition rate or integrated quantities etc.
Apparent Charge (q)

The apparent charge q of a partial discharge is that charge which if injected instantaneously between
the terminals of the test object, would momentarily change the voltage between its terminals by the
same amount as the partial discharge itself and is expresses in pico coulombs.

Repetition Rate (n):

It is the average number of partial discharge pulses per second measured over a selected time. In
practice, only pulses above a specified magnitude or within a specified range of magnitudes may be
considered

The phase angle ϕi and time ti

is the occurrence of a PD pulse is

ϕi=360*(ti/T)

Where ti is the time measured between the preceding positive going transition of the test voltage
through zero and the PD pulse. Here T is the period of the test voltage.

Partial Discharge Inception Voltage (Vi):

It is the lowest voltage at which PDs are observed in test arrangement,(in practice, lowest value at
which PD' magnitude becomes equal to or exceeds a specified low value).

6)

(1) Cavity completely surrounded by a dielectric: The discharges at both polarities are equal
or do not differ more than a factor 3.

(2) Cavity or surface discharge, at one side bounded by an electrode: the discharges at both
polarities differ more than a factor 3.

(3) Negative corona in gas: discharges are of equal magnitude and occur at one polarity only.
At higher voltage, positive corona may appear at the other side of the ellipse.

(4) Corona in oil: Typical corona pattern at one side, indistinct corona pattern at the other
side of the ellipse.

(5) Contact noise: indistinct noise pattern at the zero point where the capacitive current is
maximal.

(6) Floating part: imperfect contact of an electrode floating in the electric field causes
regularly repeating discharge groups, sometimes rotating along the ellipse.

7)

The general wavelet-based denoising method proceeds in three steps: decomposing the noisy signal,
thresholding the wavelet coefficients, and reconstructing. In the first step, the signal is transformed
into the wavelet domain and represented by weighted coefficients. This stage involves defining, the
type and order of mother wavelet, and the decomposition levels. Wavelet denoising methods can be
carried out using either hard or soft thresholding. Hard thresholding processes data in such a way
that those wavelet coefficients whose absolute values (x) are greater than the threshold (λ) are kept
and those less than the threshold are set to zero. Soft thresholding sets the wavelet coefficients
below the threshold to zero. The coefficients greater than threshold are kept and then shrunk
towards zero. The reconstruction is defined by the Inverse Discrete Wavelet Transform which
involves up-sampling and filtering steps. At the completion of this stage, the denoised signal is
represented in time domain.