High Voltage Power Apparatus- 3:0

05 Oct 2020
L. Satish, HV Lab
Warm welcome to all registrants!!

M-W-F 12:00-13:00
 Syllabus, coverage, and genesis
• E5 206 (AUG) 3:0
A. HV power transformers, equivalent circuit, surge phenomenon, standing and traveling wave
theory, ladder network representation, short circuit forces
B. Impulse testing, diagnostics and condition monitoring of transformers, natural frequencies
and its measurement, modern techniques.
C. Introduction to HV switching devices, electric arcs, short circuit currents, TRV, CB types, air, oil
and SF6 CB, short circuit testing.

Satish L, Rajanikanth B S, Udaya Kumar

• References:
• Bernard Hochart, Power Transformer Handbook, Butterworth, 1987
• The J & P Transformer Book, 12th Edn, M J Heathcote, Newnes, 1998.
• Transformers, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Tata McGraw Hill, 2001.
• Blume L F, and Boya Jian, Transformer Engineering, John Wiley and Sons, 1951.
• Garzon R D, HV Circuit Breakers – Design and Applications, Marcel and Dekker NY, 1996.
• Flurscheim C H, Power Circuit Breaker: Theory and Design, Peter Peregrinus Ltd., 1975.
• Ryan H M, and Jones G R, SF6 Circuit Breaker, Peter Peregrinus Ltd., 1989.
 Evaluation
• One closed-book test in each part A, B and C
• Couple of assignments
• Final exam is also a closed-book affair
• Grading
– 70% for sessional
– 30% for final exam
 Background material
• Insulation, dielectric
• Breakdown in insulation - gas, liquid and solid
• Breakdown under AC, DC and impulses
• Discharge, partial discharge, sparkover,
flashover, breakdown
• Service life, Ageing of insulation
• Index of ageing, remnant life ….
• Condition monitoring and diagnostics….
Diagnostics and Condition Monitoring
 Preamble
• Monitoring
• Condition monitoring
• Diagnostics
• Diagnostic testing
• Maintenance and servicing
• Outages, unplanned shutdown, down-time
• Reliability,
• Why monitoring and diagnostics have become
all-of-a-sudden IMPORTANT in recent years?
• Where does the term ‘Maintenance’ fit in??
• Does that mean these were all irrelevant
earlier? ….Certainly not…
• Then, what precisely makes these more
important in recent times?
• Privatization or deregulation
 Country 3

Country 2
HV lines or power corridors @ GMT+
3 Hours

Country 1 Poland
@ GMT USA - EST
Towers

London
USA -PST
• DTCM – Diagnostics Testing and Condition Monitoring Triggered
by structural changes in energy sector in Europe and USA, called
privatization and deregulation respectively
• Power or Energy has become a marketable quantity
• Competitive scenario compels power utilities to explore the best
way to function in this setup
• DTCM emerges the IDEAL way out for utilities to optimize
*Existing Assets
*Lower Operating Costs
*Prevent unscheduled outages and

Thereby, use Equipment most Efficiently

Benefits of Monitoring and Diagnostics
• Economic Issues
– Necessary to meet increasing demand on cost efficiencies
– In deregulated environment, cater to increased availability
and improved supply to customers
– Concepts of ASSET VALUATION and ASSET MANAGEMENT
become significant
– Unplanned outages/failures can be eliminated or minimized
– Newer outlook on Maintenance costs is possible (it was
high & partly unknown)
– leads to new concept of doing maintenance when needed
Technical Issues
• Most electrical apparatus as old, since they were installed almost 25-30
years back (sometimes even more). This calls for -
– Assessing current status and Remaining Life
– Loadability limits – how much overload for how much time??
– Scheduling next maintenance, need for repairs, etc.
• Monitoring creates opportunity to strategically plan and schedule
shutdowns thereby to manage equipment utilization and availability
• In deregulated market scenario, fast response to sudden requirements
for overloading and taking advantage of market opportunities will be
key to success for the utility
• Manage and extend the life of the apparatus with efficient and cost
effective maintenance. This requires accurate knowledge of the system
history and of costs of refurbishment, track record of past failures, etc.
• Monitoring leads to early detection of incipient faults and
first signs of failure BEFORE they lead to catastrophic failure
• Monitoring philosophy permits a change from periodic or
time-based maintenance to condition-based maintenance
• Assists to TRACK the evolution of a fault (once identified)
under actual service conditions. This is a VITAL design input
to designers to understand their design, its inadequacies
and provides avenues for corrective action on design. This
was impossible in earlier era.
• Ultimately, reduce or possibly eliminate unscheduled
outages and failures.
 Compare -Monitoring and Diagnostics

• The TWO are different terms, although

interlinked with each other
• Desirable features an ideal monitoring tool
must possess are
– On-line
– On-site
– Nonintrusive
– Nondestructive
 Monitoring
• Means to observe and /or record some event or
phenomenon in a physical system, for a given
length of time, preferably done without causing
any or minimum interruption to the system, and
done in a non-invasive manner. It means on-line
acquisition of data. Further it Includes-
– Sensor development
– Measurement techniques for on-line applications
– Data acquisition
• Monitoring hardware and instrument must be rugged,
reliable, low cost, suitable for on-line applications, shielded
adequately for high noise/EMI, etc.
• Usually, the monitoring sensors or instruments are
permanently kept installed on apparatus
• Capable of communicating with either wireless or internet
for data transfer, remote communication, control, and
command execution
• Facility for automatic data logging and huge storage space
for data needed. Modern computers and hardware play a
vital role in enhancing monitoring activity
 Diagnostics
• Means to analyze and interpret the monitored data
such that the cause for a particular event can be traced
and suitable corrective or preventive measure can be
initiated. Sometimes, it can also include off-line
measurements to reconfirm an observed event
• Diagnostics is performed to either determine actual
condition of an apparatus or as a response to a
received alarm
• Diagnostics supports monitoring to infer or interpret
monitored data and give recommendations; else the
monitoring has LITTLE value
 
• Involves use of sophisticated models to explain and
interpret complex phenomena to draw inferences
regarding nature, type, location and severity of a
fault, e.g. in FRA analysis
• Diagnostics, unlike monitoring, is not a permanent
installation, so use of high-tech costly equipment or
technique is justified
• Presently, much of diagnostics is off-line. A shift
from off-line to on-line diagnostics will happen soon
Monitoring Vs Diagnostics – The Logic
 On-Line/Off-Line
• In on-line, the apparatus is working normally, connected to the
network and the monitoring activity has to be carried in situ.
• Issues of signal injection, SNR, voltage isolation, access port,
interference: e.g. FRA, UHF, PD, DGA. On-line represents actual
condition in practice, therefore, data represents reality.
• In off-line, temperature, stresses, load, MAY not be the same.
But, has other advantages of higher SNR, detailed/thorough
investigation is possible, repeated controlled tests are possible,
any terminal conditions can be used to minimize coupling
effects from other neighboring phases. While on-line is good
for monitoring, off-line is good for diagnostics.
 On-Site/Off-Site
• Issues relate to acquisition of reliable data under
severe SNR, interference problems, costs are less
as it avoids transportation, monitoring
equipment must be rugged & configurable on-
site, special voltage requirements can be a
concern. Off-site means apparatus is transported
back to factory, permits thorough investigations,
repairs, several diagnostic tests can be run,
internal inspection is possible, costlier, etc.
 Intrusive/Non-intrusive
• Access to interior of equipment is required to
perform monitoring, can only be off-line, involves
shutdown and dismantling, high time & cost.
• Non-intrusive does not require internal access, relies
on gathering data from sensors mounted on the
external surface of the apparatus, or at the
terminals. Does not interfere with normal
functioning of apparatus, e.g. vibration monitoring of
bearings, UHF sensors, ultrasound scan for PD
location, hand-held scanners are used.
 Destructive/Non-destructive
• As name implies, in this, a possibility of destruction exists. In
some tests, say, DP test, a sample of the paper insulation from a
particular part of the apparatus is required to be extracted. Or,
during a HV impulse test, when BIL is applied, there is a high
probability of a major failure or destruction of the test object.
This is analogous to the test wherein the ultimate dielectric
strength is to be found, invariably resulting in a failure. Costly,
sacrificial test object is needed, but useful.
• In contrast, non-destructive tests are highly preferred, because,
sample or test object is not destroyed, repeatedly used, useful
for monitoring dynamical or progressive changes in quantities,
current status can be known, etc.
IDEALLY, a monitoring tool must be:
• On-Line, On-Site, Non-destructive, and non-
intrusive in nature
– Examples satisfying all four requirements
DGA
Acoustic PD
 Self-Restoring and Non-Self-Restoring
Insulation
• Air, SF6, gaseous insulation and liquid
insulation to some extent are self-restoring,
recover or regain full dielectric withstand
strength soon after a breakdown
 
• Solid insulations are non-self-restoring, since
immediately after a puncture, they have to be
isolated or removed from the circuit, and they
cannot recover the dielectric strength.
 WHY at all an APPARATUS FAILS?
• Why should apparatus insulation fail in spite of
– use of superior quality insulating material
– Computer aided design
– Quality control
– Great advances in manufacturing process

It is due to a process called INSULATION AGEING -

a natural, inevitable, irreversible, continuous event
occurring under normal conditions and observable
in all animate and inanimate objects!
• Failure of electrical apparatus is largely due to
breakdown of insulation
• Breakdown of insulation can be defined as
– Transit from insulating phase to conducting phase
 Insulation Ageing and Models
• Functions performed by electrical insulation
are-
– Electrical isolation
– Mechanical support
– Heat dissipation
– Energy storage (then called dielectric)
– Personal safety
• Types - solids, liquids, gases
STRESSES affecting insulation ageing are-
• Electrical
– ageing by electric gradient
• Thermal
– high temp, resistive losses, chemical instability
• Mechanical
– Vibrations, tension/compression
• Environmental
– Moisture, chemical reactions, oxidation, etc..
• And their interactions leading to synergetic effects
• The nature of the applied stress, i.e. single or
combination
• Ageing under thermal, mechanical and electrical stress shows an increase in
lifetime at moderate temperatures up to approximately 130°C and a rapid
decrease if the ageing temperature is increased up to 180°C (Fig.2). These
findings are explained on one hand by an increasing thermal degradation of
organic matter and on the other hand by a decrease of internal stress and
crack formation in the binder resin at higher temperatures.
 Accelerated ageing
• Ageing studies- Goal is to establish a relationship
between ageing process and stress causing it, suggest
empirical models, and to verify them
• Normal level of stress – results in long-term tests,
several years to gather data
• To predict end-of-life with certain degree of accuracy
and in a reasonably short-time, accelerated ageing
tests are performed, its very useful to design engineers
• Principle - Do experiments at elevated electric (E) or
thermal (T) stress, much above normal values, and
extrapolate life-time to normal stress value!!
 Life Models
• Electric stress
– Two major models relate stress to time-to-failure
– Inverse power law and exponential model
• Inverse power law

where,
L= time-to-failure (life time)
V=applied voltage (stress)
k, n are constants to be determined from expts
 Ageing experiments

HV

Ground
Oil paper
OIl insulation
• Exponential law

where,
L- time-to-failure (life time)
V- applied voltage (stress)
c, k- constant to be determined from expts
• Thermal stress (Arrhenius Law)
– A major factor limiting life of electric insulation
– Process well described by Arrhenius’ law
– Based on dependence of chemical reaction rates
on temperature

where, L – life, T-temperature, A,B constants

Electrical tree
Stator coils used in ageing expts
Defects- actual cases
• Insulation A, a combination of a glass-backed
micatape and an epoxy based VPI resin which
is mostly used for large power generators

• Insulation B, a combination of a polyesterfilm/

-fleece backed mica tape and a polyester
based VPI resin.