A Review on Partial Discharge Phenomenon in Rotating Machines Operated Using WBG Motor Drives

Partial discharge (PD) is considered as a serious threat to reliability of insulation of medium and high-voltage rotating machines. Rotating machines fed by Wide Band Gap (WBG)-based motor drives/inverters are widely being used in several applications such as More Electric Aircraft (MEA). The pulsative output voltage of the inverter brings concern of having the insulation of the rotation machines to be PD-free. This paper provides a general review on the effects of voltage waveform characteristics of WBG-based motor drives on PD as the main factor of insulation deterioration such as frequency, rise time and duty cycle. This is followed by review of detection methods for PD under high switching frequency and high dV/dt environment.