A new monitoring and characterization system of partial discharges based on the analysis of the spectral power

Partial Discharges (PD) are one of the possible causes for unexpected faults in power systems equipment, so that its measure is an essential tool for high-voltage electrical equipment maintenance. In order to characterize the PD activity, some statistic magnitudes are necessary. For this reason, the acquisition and processing of PD is very important when making critical decisions regarding disconnection or repairing assets in power systems. On the other hand, the measurement environments often present multiple sources of electrical noise, thus the proper interpretation of PD patterns is a challenge in the identification of sources of different nature. In this paper, the development of a PD monitoring system capable of displaying in real time the classic PD parameters, the PD waveform, its frequency spectrum and calculating statistical parameters of the acquisition, are presented. On the whole, a new method of identifying sources of PD and electrical noise, developed by the authors, which is based on measuring the relative spectral power of PD pulses, is shown. This method has proven effective in characterizing PD and electrical noise; a series of experiments conducted in several test objects are presented in order to validate the performance of the proposed system.\u