Radiometer monitoring system for partial discharge detection in substation

Progress on the development of an insulation defect detection and location system using a partial discharge (PD) wireless sensor network (WSN) will be presented. Such a PD WSN based on intensity-only measurements has cost and scalability advantages over existing detection and location technologies based on time-difference-of-arrival measurements such as described in (I. E. Portugues, P. J. Moore, I. A. Glover, IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, 1, 2009, pp. 20–29). Figure 1 shows a hypothetical deployment of the PD WSN in an electricity substation. The (red) pentagram denotes a PD source, yellow circles and triangles denote sensor nodes, and the yellow St George's cross denotes the data collection/processing node. Each node of the WSN is a broadband radiometer with a measurement band of 50–800 MHz, Figure 2. Three measurement sub-bands allow the radiometer to distinguish different forms of PD; in particular internal PD and corona discharge. WirelessHart has been selected as the network communications technology since this offers improved reliability over other standards (e.g. Zigbee) in harsh industrial environments.