Identification of single and multiple partial discharge sources by optical method using mathematical morphology aided sparse representation classifier

Partial Discharge (PD) is one of the most critical electrical phenomena affecting the life of electrical equipment. Repetitive PD leading to arcing faults is a recurrent problem in many air insulated systems, such as high voltage air-insulated switchgears. Hence, detection and localization of PD inside such electrical equipment is necessary for early prevention of impending failure. Keeping this in mind, this paper proposes a methodology to localize single and multiple PD sources employing two recent developments in signal processing and machine learning techniques. Optical sensors have been used to record the PD data inside a cubical steel box. A cylindrical barrier has been inserted inside this box to emulate geometrical structures inside Switchgears. Mathematical Morphology aided feature extraction has been employed to extract important features from the PD signal. Sparse Representation classification has been employed to classify the extracted features and to identify the type and location of PD source. The results show that this methodology gives very high classification accuracy corresponding to both single and multiple PD sources.