On-line Monitoring of Transformer Bushings using a new Decentralized Measurement System

S. Riendeau*, P. Picher, F. Lonard, M. Gauvin, H. Bertrand

Hydro-Qubec Research Institute (IREQ) 1800 boul. Lionel-Boulet, Varennes, Qc, Canada, J3X 1S1 * riendeau.sylvain@ireq.ca
AbstractA new bushing insulation monitoring system based on decentralized measurements of the bushing-tap current is presented. The development of this decentralized system is driven by the need to reduce the implementation cost of bushing monitoring based on the comparison of specimens connected in parallel on the same electrical phase. GPS is used for time synchronization of the decentralized measurements. The phase and amplitude measurement accuracy specifications are respectively 0.01 and 0.1%. These specifications are required to allow monitoring of the insulation degradation as well as variations of the bushing capacitance and power/dissipation factor introduced by the fluctuation of the internal insulation temperature and ambient conditions (e.g. rain). Simulations of the new decentralized measurement system were performed to determine the detailed specifications. The system will be validated by comparing it with on-line measurements performed on nine 735/230-kV transmission transformers using a standard galvanic measurement system. These transformers are located in a substation with HVDC converters, which represents a challenging noisy environment for such accurate measurements. Keywords- bushing; insulation diagnostic; monitoring; GPS synchronization; power dissipation factor

measurements on bushings connected in parallel on the same electrical phase is more sensitive than the sum current method or any inter-phase-based calculations [2]. The standard technology used to implement such measurements requires galvanic links between the examined bushings and a central measurement system, since the signals from the bushing taps used for determining the phase angle must be recorded synchronously. The cabling required for this distributed-measurement approach increases the implementation costs and therefore limits the application of this technique for monitoring bushing insulation in a large transformer population. To resolve this issue, Hydro-Qubecs research institute (IREQ) is developing a new concept of distributed measurements using Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to provide time synchronization. This new technology will reduce the implementation cost of the technology while maintaining the required measurement accuracy for the phase angle (power/dissipation factor) and the amplitude (capacitance). The new distributed measuring system will be validated with on-line measurements performed on nine 735/230-kV transmission transformers using a standard galvanic measurement system. These transformers are located in a substation with HVDC converters, which represents a challenging noisy environment for such accurate measurements. The paper presents: the accuracy performance requirements for the new distributed-measurement system; a comparison of the different diagnostic techniques using field measurements with a standard measurement system; the detailed concept of the new system; a summary description of the algorithms used to calculate the bushing-tap-signal phasors and the parameters related to the electrical insulation of the bushings; a summary of the laboratory validation tests to prove the accuracy performance of the new system.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Transformer bushings and on-load tap changers are responsible for a significant portion of transformer outages [1]. Bushing reliability is generally very good and much better than on-load tap changers but failure of a bushing will generally have a larger impact and higher total failure costs because of the risk of fire and projection of porcelain, causing personnel safety issues and potential damage to neighboring equipment. Conventional periodic off-line electrical insulation diagnostic tests (at 10 kV) show a limited ability to prevent failures of transformer bushings. The on-line diagnostic approach has the advantage of evaluating the insulation at full voltage and at service temperature. Moreover, since the measurement is done while the transformer in service, the diagnostic performance is improved for problems with a short gestation period. Hydro-Qubec has therefore investigated various on-line diagnostic techniques using sensors on the bushing tap to measure the capacitive leakage current and evaluate the capacitance and power/dissipation factor, in service. Field experimentation of methods used to derive parameters related to the electrical insulation, i.e. the capacitance and power/dissipation factor, from on-line measurements of the bushing tap current shows clearly that the comparison of

II. ACCURACY PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS The difficulty in the measurement technique is in being able to detect even very slight changes. For example, a change in the dissipation/power factor by 0.1% means that the phase changes by an angle of 0.057. The typical power factor of a high-voltage bushing is about 0.5% and an increase to 0.7% can be significant. In terms of capacitance, a variation of 1%

978-1-4244-6301-5/10/$26.00 @2010 IEEE

can be significant especially for high-voltage bushings having a good number of capacitive layers (in the range of 50 to 100). In order to keep close track of the insulation degradation with a decentralized measurement system, the distributed measurement accuracy requirement was set to the following values: 0.01 for phase measurement; 0.1% for amplitude measurement. III.
ON-LINE GALVANIC REFERENCE MEASUREMENTS

disturbances in the phase angle and amplitude measurement at grid frequency. The CGMS was assembled from standard high-quality commercial modules and programmed to compute the phase and amplitude of all the channels every minute. The results are saved in a local network storage device and transferred offsite once a day to a central database for analysis. For deeper investigation, the reference system saves the raw data from every five acquisitions locally.

We have developed and installed a centralized galvanic measurement system (CGMS) at Nicolet substation in April 2009 to gather reference data and validate signal-processing algorithms. The installation was done on three banks of singlephase autotransformers rated 370 MVA (735/230 kV) connected in parallel (T2, T3 and T4). This substation is part of the HVDC multi-terminal transmission system for energy exchange between Qubec (CA) and New England (US). Fig. 1 illustrates typical bushing-tap current waveforms on the 735-kV and 230-kV sides. The total harmonic distortion on the 230-kV side is higher because of the harmonics generated by the HVDC converters connected on that side. This, in addition to the high EMI environment of Nicolet substation, poses a serious challenge for on-line bushing monitoring. Commercial resistive bushing-tap sensors were selected for their robustness, simplicity, high stability and minimal effect on the bushing-tap current phase and amplitude. The resistive sensor limits the bushing tap voltage to a safe level in case of an accidental cable disconnect or failure. A total of 18 sensors were installed on the transmission transformers and connected using twisted-pair cables to the measuring instrument located in the control house.
735 kV Bushing
0,15 0,1

Figure 2. Centralized phasor computational unit installed at Nicolet substation

230 kV Bushing
0,05

0,05 0 -0,05 -0,1 -0,15 0 0,01 0,02 0,03 0,04 0,05

-0,05 0 0,01 0,02 0,03 0,04 0,05

Time (s)

Time (s)

Figure 1. Typical bushing current measurements observed at Nicolet substation

Since the bushing-tap current phasors are computed independently, it is possible to compare various methods to determine the diagnostic parameters. Two recognized methods exist for performing on-line diagnosis of bushings based on measurement of the bushing tap current, namely the sum current method and the relative measurement method. The sum current method [3] is based on the principle that, in a three-phase system, if the system voltages are perfectly balanced and the bushings identical, the vector sum of the bushing insulation currents will be zero. In practice, bushings are never identical and system voltages are never perfectly balanced, and these factors need to be addressed for data interpretation. When one of the bushings deteriorates, its capacitance and/or power factor will change and, correspondingly, the sum current will deviate. A variant of this method is to use the amplitudes and phase shifts of the fundamental component of the bushing tap currents on different phases and calculate parameters that would be sensitive to the capacitance and power/dissipation factor of the bushings. Again, these parameters will be influenced by interphase voltage unbalances. The relative measurement method [4] uses two or more bushings connected in parallel on the same electrical phase and calculates the ratio of the amplitudes and the tangent of the phase angle between the fundamental components of the bushing insulation currents. The tangent of the phase angle (tan) is sensitive to any change in the power/dissipation factor of one of the bushings, and the ratio of amplitudes is sensitive to changes in the capacitance of one of the bushings. If relative measurements are performed using three items of equipment in parallel, then the faulted bushing can be identified. The inter-phase voltage asymmetry will not influence the interpretation, since the applied voltage is essentially the same for all equipment connected in parallel.

The measuring instrument has one independent acquisition channel for each bushing sensor (Fig. 2). Overvoltage protection devices are included in the bushing sensor and at the channel input. A channel is composed of a shunt, conditioning circuit, sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital insulation circuit. This scheme was selected for its high immunity to noise and to ground potential rise, and the intrinsic synchronization of the selected oversampling sigma-delta converters when driven from a common clock. Furthermore, the oversampling ADC allows a simpler anti-alias filter to be used in the conditioning circuit, which helps to minimize the

Current (A)

Current (A)

Fig. 3 shows the data collected during one month for the tan between specimens connected in parallel compared with an inter-phase-based calculation method, as previously shown for another installation in [2]. The measurements taken every minute are given without any processing or filtering. The gathered data again confirmed the better stability and sensitivity of the relative measurement method compared to the inter-phase-base calculation method.
Proposed method Inter-phase calculation

the acquisition and the estimated phasor output. The PMU observation time window is typically 1 to 3 cycles of the 60-Hz grid frequency. On the contrary, bushing monitoring can rely on post-processing to target the best accuracy. The observation time window is then limited by the 60-Hz grid frequency stability allowing 10 to more than 100 cycles to be processed. Moreover, the processing delay of the anti-aliasing filter, ADC and synchronization noise filtering are not a concern for bushing monitoring. When all these factors are taken into account, the accuracy of a dedicated monitoring system can be 20 to 40 dB better than that of a typical PMU. A. Measurement system architecture and detailed concepts The decentralized system consists of bushing-tap current phasor computing units (PCU) which transfer GPS time-tagged measurements to the bushing diagnostic unit (BDU) using the existing substation yard communication network (Fig. 5). The PCU is connected to the transformer bushing-tap sensors and installed in its cabinet. A GPS antenna is attached on the transformer and connected to the PCUs timing receiver. The BDU is located in the substation control building. It receives the phasors from the PCU, computes the tan and amplitude ratios, stores data, makes trending analysis, poses a local diagnostic and sends alarms to the maintenance center. The BDU also allows the maintenance center crew to explore and analyze the relevant data remotely. The local network in the substation yard connects the control building to the HV transformer cabinets. This highspeed network under deployment at Hydro-Qubec is currently being used to gather the data of the other monitoring devices installed on the transformers. Using this network allows a significant reduction in the deployment and maintenance costs of the new distributed on-line monitoring system. This architecture is independent of the network topology or technology as long as the communication protocol between the PCU and the BDU follows the local network standard.

Figure 3. Same phase (left) vs. inter-phase (right) calculation observed at Nicolet substation over one month with the galvanic reference system.

The typical daily stability of tan measurements appears to be better than 0.05% except for special events like grid commutations or rain. In both cases, the tan value is disturbed during the event and the baseline may stabilize at a slightly new value, representative of the new operating conditions, e.g. transformer temperature or cleanliness of the bushing. Similar dynamic transitions are also observed for the amplitude ratios. Fig. 4 illustrates one of many rainy events that were captured by the monitoring system. The corresponding weather data was taken from three weather stations located respectively at 20 km NNW, 32 km SE and 30 km W. For this event, the tan fast fluctuations exceeded 0.15% during the rain and the baseline fluctuation was in agreement with the usual one-day period fluctuation. Since these fluctuations happen at the same time on all the bushings, they are attributed to ambient conditions and are rejected for diagnosis of the internal insulation of the individual bushings.
40 0,2 0,15 0,1 0,05 0 -0,05 -0,1 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20

Rain cumulative (mm)

30 20 10 0 -10 -20

Tg (%)

Time (hours relative to 2008:05:29-0H00 local time)

Figure 4. tan observed at Nicolet substation during a raining day (blue) with the corresponding rain cumulative from three surrounding weather stations (red)

Figure 5. Distributed measurement system

IV.

DECENTRALIZED MEASUREMENT SYSTEM

Distributed phase measurement systems already exist in commercial Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) technology [5]. Since PMUs are designed for protection and control, their focus is on real-time output with a minimized delay between

The PCU has six channels to accommodate up to six bushings per transformer tank (Fig. 6). Its channel input structure is similar to the CGMS, the main difference being that the shunt values are selected to adapt the nominal bushing current to the ADC input range. Since the PCU is intended to

be installed outdoors, it needs to be designed for an operating temperature range between -40C and +85C. The temperature and aging drifts of the electronic components are some of the potential sources of inaccurate results on both the amplitude and phase-angle. This problem is handled by careful component selection (low drift, non inductive, etc.) and by reducing the number of analog components.

installations on transformers. The loss of tracking is acceptable for on-line monitoring and can be compensated by the shorttime stability of the reference clock. B. Numerical signal processing The effect of voltage harmonics may cause a significant error in digital methods that employ a zero-crossing detection scheme [7]. Our numerical signal-processing principles are presented in Fig. 7. The delta-sigma ADC converts the signal at 50 k samples per second. In order to reduce the processing power requirements, this numerical signal is filtered by a lowpass Finite Impulse Filter (FIR) and decimated by ten. With a 5-kHz sampling rate, a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) processes 83.3 samples per cycle. The maximum number of cycles processed by a FFT is fixed by the grid frequency stability, and the minimum by the type of spectral window and the wanted rejection of subsynchronous components.

Figure 6. Phasor Computational Unit (PCU) with a bushing sensor connection

The PCUs field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip is used to time-tag the ADC samples at reference clock resolution. The FPGA time tag counter is driven by a 125-MHz low-temperature drift clock. The counter is reset by the GPS one pulse per second (1PPS) signal. The intervals between 1PPSs are also used to calculate the reference clock frequency. Systems based on GPS synchronization sampling usually call for extra hardware (e.g. phase-lock-loop) to steer the ADC sampling frequency and timing to the GPS time. This approach is well adapted to PMU but shows a lack of flexibility in the minimization of GPS noise after the sampling, i.e. the local clock noise is already mixed with GPS noise in the sampling signal. This is why, in order to replace some of the hardware by algorithms, we chose a time tagging of the numerical sampling followed by a time/phase correction algorithm. Since the GPS 1PPS noise is not correlated with the noise of the reference clock used for sampling, algorithm strategies can be used to reduce both noises. In addition to time tagging, the FPGA is also used for the first stage of signal processing, buffering and interfacing with the processor (CPU). The processor is responsible for the phase-angle and amplitude computation of the time-tagged signals coming from the ADCs. The CPU transmits the resulting phasor data through its Ethernet fiber optic port to the BDU. The GPS standard deviation accuracy for real-time timing is typically 100 ns [6]. Our measurements made with GPS timing modules and their antennas exposed to partial view of the sky over a 24-day period confirmed a standard deviation better than 50 ns between two GPS receivers. However, the partial sky view of the GPS antennas was responsible for three occurrences of satellite tracking loss, lasting less than 5 minutes. This setup is representative of GPS antenna
Figure 7. PCU numerical signal processing principles

The spectral window product, the FFT and the spectral component parameter estimation are done by the CPU. Since the reference clock is more accurate than the ADC clock, the sampling frequency is estimated from the last 1PPS counter value. The phase is referenced to a time tag generated from the counter values and GPS data. The tan values are estimated by the BDU considering the respective PCU time tags and reference clock frequencies. The use of a high side lobe rejection spectral window [8] allows more than 90 dB rejection of harmonic and subsynchronous components. The accuracy of spectral estimation is a function of the signal-to-noise ratio:
SNR = G N a0 / w

(1)

under a spectral lobe where G : processing gain factor of the spectral window N : number of time samples processed by the FFT a0 / w : signal to white noise ratio, time signal With the Blackman-Harris window selected, for N=4096 samples, the signal-to-noise ratio under the spectral component lobe is SNR(dB) = a0 / w (dB) + 32.6 dB , expressed in dB. The phase standard deviation for bushing A, expressed in degrees, is bound by [9]

1 . (2) SNR With the hypothesis of noncorrelated noise between measurements, the tan variance is the quadratic sum of the variances of the two phase estimations. Since A B , the tan standard deviation is

Tan STD (%)

Tan STD (%)

4 5

A >

180

10 1 0,1 0,01 0,001 0,01 0,1 1 10 100 1000 10 10

10 1 0,1 0,01 0,001 5 10 15 20 25

Reference clock frequency (MHz)

Effective bit resolution (bit)

2 tg > or tg > ( a0 / w (dB) + 29.6 dB ) (3) SNR expressed in dB. Taking account of the analog white noise and the ADC equivalent noise, the tan typical accuracy exceeds -100 dB or 0.001%. The corresponding delay dispersion is 27 ns, in the same range as the GPS noise. This accuracy can be achieved with a standard galvanic system. For a decentralized measurement system, the GPS noise needs to be taken into account, as discussed in the next section.

Figure 8. tan dispersion vs. clock frequency (left-24 bits ADC) and effective bit resolution (right- fclock = 1 GHz); N= 1024, 75 dB input SNR

V. CONCLUSION The on-line measurements performed on nine 735/230-kV transformers by a standard galvanic centralized system demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed methodology excluding the GPS noise. The accuracy of the measurement system allows us to study the variation of the bushing capacitance and the power/dissipation factor introduced by fluctuations of the internal insulation temperature and ambient conditions (e.g. rain). Simulations of the new decentralized system demonstrate that the 75 dB input signal-to-noise ratio justifies the use of a 125-MHz reference clock for time-tagging and an ADC with an effective resolution of 18 bits. The observed grid and reference clock frequencies drifting do not perturb the tan values and the expected measurement accuracy of this parameter is about 0.002%. The distributed measurement system is well optimized since the phase estimation dispersion and the GPS noise are in the same range. The decentralized system still needs to be validated in field conditions; field measurements collected using the CGMS will be used as a reference for this validation. The software simulations and laboratory tests have already demonstrated the feasibility of this concept which shows many advantages over current systems in terms of reduced cost and simplicity of installation. REFERENCES
[1] [2] An International Survey on Failures of Large Power Transformers in Service, CIGRE Working Group 12.05, Electra, No. 88, 1983. P. Picher, C. Rajotte and V.N. Nguyen, Field Experience with on-line Bushing Diagnostic to improve Transformer Reliability, CIGRE 2008, A2-217, 2008. M.F. Lachman, W. Walter, P.A.von Guggenberg, On-Line Diagnostics of High-Voltage Bushings and Current Transformers Using the Sum Current Method, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 15, No. 1, January 2000 Z. Berler, V. Sokolov; V. Prikhodko and D. Bates, On-line monitoring of HV bushings and current transformers, Proc. of Electrical Insulation Conference and Electrical Manufacturing Expo, pp. 61-66, 2005. Standard for Synchrophasors for Power Systems, IEEE Std. 1344-1995. P. H. Dana,. Global Positioning System (GPS) Time Dissemination for Real-Time Applications, Real-Time systems, 12, 9-40 (1997). Pei Wang, M. R. Raghuveer,W. McDermid and J. C. Bromley, A digital technique for the on-line measurement of dissipation factor and capacitance, IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp.228-232, April 2001. F. J. Harris, On the use of windows for harmonic analysis with the discrete Fourier transform, Proceeding of IEEE, Vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 51-83, 1978. C. Rife and R. Boorstyn, Single-tone parameter estimation from discrete-time observation, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, IT-20, no. 5, pp.591-598, 1974.

C. Distributed measurement system simulation model The software model simulates the analog signal, ADC, GPS and the signal-processing algorithm. It addresses the impact of the standard galvanic measurement parameters:

grid frequency fluctuation; analog signal-to-noise ratio; ADC effective bit resolution; number of samples N processed by the FFT; and the additional parameters related to the decentralized measurement:
reference clock frequency, drift and jitter; the GPS noise.

The software model allows the compromises between the hardware component selection, processing parameters and CPU throughput management to be optimized. For example, Fig. 8 shows the impact of the reference clock frequency and ADC effective bit resolution on the tan dispersion. On both curves, the floor at 0.001% is due to the 75 dB input signal-tonoise ratio observed at Nicolet substation and implemented in the analog-signal model. This floor demonstrates that the reference clock frequency and effective ADC resolution should be greater than 100 MHz and 16 bits respectively. The effective resolution is defined as the actual number of bits used to convert the signal in the event that its amplitude is less than the ADC full scale. The simulations show that the measuring accuracy is not disturbed by reference clock or grid frequencies drifting. The GPS contribution to the BDU tan dispersion is the quadratic sum:
2 2 2 BDU = tg + GPS

[3]

[4]

[5] [6] [7]

(4)

Where GPS = tGPS 2 60 Hz and tGPS is the GPS noise. In the case of uncorrelated noise between PCUs, this latter GPS noise is the quadratic sum of the noise coming from two different GPSs. Our typical measured values yield a GPS noise contribution t2GPS of 50 ns or 0.0018 % in (4).

[8]

[9]