Measurement of partial discharge of power cables using oscillatory wave test system

Oscillating Wave Test System - OWTS using damped AC Voltages (DAC) is an alternative test method for continuous AC voltage testing for partial discharge measurement of power cables at field. It is a method which is used to analyse the healthiness of the insulation of capacitive test object. Damped AC voltages (DAC) is an effective and portable method to detect PD and assess the condition of insulation for on-site medium voltage XLPE cables of very long length of high capacitance. The input power requirement of OWTS test system is low compared to conventional power frequency PD measurement system. IEEE 400 and IEEE 400.4 standards recommend partial discharge measurement by continuous or damped AC voltages (DAC). In this paper, the OWTS system with PD detection are simulated using the SIMULINK tool box of MATLAB and PSCAD. Defective medium voltage XLPE cable is also simulated in both MATLAB and PSCAD. The simulated circuits of OWTS, defective XLPE Cable and the PD Detection circuit are all integrated as a one circuit and the partial discharge characteristics of the XLPE cable are compared with both SIMULINK and PSCAD software platforms. The partial discharge measurement with 50 Hz voltage was also simulated in both the platforms. The partial discharge measurement for various dimensions of void sizes and various rating of power cables are compared with 50 Hz and Oscillatory test voltage frequency in the simulation environment of SIMULINK and PSCAD.