Locating partial discharge source occurring on transformer bushing by using the improved TDOA method

Partial discharge (PD) caused by degradation of insulting materials of electric power equipment is a symptom of breakdown. Furthermore, the electromagnetic (EM) wave emitted from PD interfere the surrounding environment. For avoiding the insulating breakdown and obtaining a better EM environment, it is necessary to detect and locate PD position as soon as possible. In general, from the waveforms of EM waves received by an antenna array, the PD source position can be located by applying the time difference of arrival (TDOA)-based methods. However, owing to noises and multipath waves, the estimation accuracy of the TDOA may decrease, and the location accuracy will be degraded. In the previous study, an improved TDOA estimation technique had been proposed and its applicability for source localization on distribution line was confirmed. In order to further test, in this paper, the proposed technique is applied to estimate the TDOAs from the EM waves which emitted from the PD occurring on transformer bushing. It is shown that the estimation TDOA and source localization results are better than the results by applying the traditional estimation methods.