Moisture estimation in power transformer oil using acoustic signals and spectral kurtosis
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to present a new technique for estimating the contamination by moisture in power transformer insulating oil based on the spectral kurtosis analysis of the acoustic signals of partial discharges (PDs). Basically, in this approach, the spectral kurtosis of the PD acoustic signal is calculated and the correlation between its maximum value and the moisture percentage is explored to find a function that calculates the moisture percentage. The function can be easily implemented in DSP, FPGA, or any other type of embedded system for online moisture monitoring. To evaluate the proposed approach, an experiment is assembled with a piezoelectric sensor attached to a tank, which is filled with insulating oil samples contaminated by different levels of moisture. A device generating electrical discharges is submerged into the oil to simulate the occurrence of PDs. Detected acoustic signals are processed using fast kurtogram algorithm to extract spectral kurtosis values. The obtained data are used to find the fitting function that relates the water contamination to the maximum value of the spectral kurtosis. Experimental results show that the proposed method is suitable for online monitoring system of power transformers.
- Publication:
-
Measurement Science and Technology
- Pub Date:
- March 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1088/0957-0233/27/3/035301
- Bibcode:
- 2016MeScT..27c5301L