Ubiquitous, On-Line, Partial Discharge Trending

There is an increasing awareness of the role partial discharge monitoring plays in extending the operational life of electric power assets. For years, high value assets have undergone a periodic, off-line testing regimen; however, these tests are cost-prohibitive for the large numbers of transmission and distribution assets or even the electrical balance of plant equipment at generation facilities. This paper seeks to apply layered processing to extract meaningful information from real-time, on-line partial discharge signals, allowing asset health estimations from a highly reduced data stream consistent with distributed control systems.