On line Partial Discharge Measurements by means of signal processing tools integrated in micro processing hardware

The evaluation of the insulation condition of high power transformers, cable systems, etc. by means of on line partial discharge measurements have been traditionally an important challenge due to the difficulty of removing the background noise existing in the substations. The discrimination of PD pulses in the power transformer from other external PD pulses coming outdoor equipment, or even PD pulses coming from the bushing or from the cable termination has been also an important challenge. Power signal processing numerical tools used for filtering and for clustering have been integrated in a new micro processing hardware to improve the capabilities of on line partial discharges diagnosis. In this paper a new on line PD monitoring system is introduced that uses non-invasive sensors placed…