Identifying Deteriorated or Contaminated Power System Components from RF Emissions

In this paper, a technique for identifying deteriorated or contaminated electrical equipment is presented. The technique uses the harmonic components of radio frequency emissions to detect partial discharge events. The sum-of-squares of the magnitudes of the first five 60-Hz harmonic components of the demodulated RF signal are used to identify faulty power system components. These RF harmonic components result from partial discharge. The proposed technique is capable of detecting all events detected, as well as others not detected, by the current industry standard - The Exacter Trigger. It is also more compact, portable, uses less data, requires fewer computations, and consumes less power. The technique has been implemented on a single-chip digital signal processor, and validated via laboratory and field tests.