On-line partial discharge detection of turbine generator using gigahertz-band spatial phase difference method

Partial discharge (PD) within voids in solid insulating systems is a symptom and/or a direct cause of a deterioration of stator windings of a turbine generator. The bandwidth of the electromagnetic waves emitted from PD is very broad and ranges to the gigahertz. We developed a new system based on the spatial phase difference method for detecting microwaves (GHz) emitted from PD. In this paper we applied this system to two off-line turbine generators in the overhaul and an on-line turbine generator which has two built-in antennas. On-line PD detection of the turbine generator is very useful for recognizing abnormal and/or deteriorated stator winding insulation without a machine outage. It was found that the detection system was able to detect microwaves emitted from PD in an operating turbine generator. (C) 2000 Scripta Technica.