Fault Symptom Diagnostics for Coupling Capacitors using the Analytic Hierarchy Process

The new method of diagnostics of current technical state (CTS) for power supply systems, substations and electrical networks is proposed. It is based on the mathematical model with pairwise comparison of fuzzy expert evaluations for fault symptoms of power equipment. It was shown that it is possible to make a plausible prediction on the fault reasons and the possibility for occurrence of emergencies. The mathematical model is based on the consistency of these evaluations for diagnostic symptoms of current technical state of power equipment using the fundamental scale of Saaty in the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) according to nine intensities of importance. Ranking of possible fault reasons is performed by expert preferences that allows choosing the most significant reasons. Expert evaluations of current technical state of high-frequency coupling capacitors were done with the required consistency level of lower than 0.1. The proposed method indicates that final decision can be made at the new level of hierarchy based on three possible decisions: further operation is possible (non defective operable state), further operation is possible (defective operable state), removal of power equipment for repair (final state).