The phenomena and characteristics of oil-paper insulation surface discharge under AC and DC voltage

Surface discharge in oil-paper insulation is a common defect in converter transformer. Because of the complex operation conditions in converter transformer, the occurrence likelihood of surface discharge increases. It is important to understand the phenomena and characteristics of surface discharge in oil-paper insulation for fault diagnosis of converter transformer. But the electric field in converter transformer is AC-DC combined electric field, which is quite different from AC voltage. So this article built an oil-paper insulation surface partial discharge detection platform under AC-DC combined voltage, and then analyzed the trend of partial discharge characteristics, at last divided the severity classification according to the characteristics of discharge and dissolved gas analysis (DGA). The diagnosis method under AC voltage has certain applicability under AC-DC combined voltage. These characteristics on partial discharge and DGA could be the foundations of fault diagnosis for converter transformer. © 2016, The editorial office of Transaction of China Electrotechnical Society. All right reserved.