A novel technique to infer electrical asset condition through partial discharge analysis and its application to distribution networks

Condition based maintenance practices are becoming an essential tool to achieve adequate reliability and availability of electrical assets that are close to their design life. Bulk diagnosis of insulation systems should be carried out jointly with local degradation assessment in oder to decide effective maintenance actions. This paper focuses firstly on the requirements that a diagnostic system aimed at local degradation assessment through partial discharge detection and analysis should meet. Then, an innovative system that has been proposed recently, able to fulfill these requirements, is described. Eventually, applications of this system to apparatus typically used in distribution systems are reported. (6 pages)