Diagnostics of Oil Filled Cable Terminations

Cable termination is one of the important components in the electrical power system. A failure of it can cause a long interruption, costly repair and loss of revenue. An existing oil filled cable termination such as rubber tube and porcelain type of cable termination require an observation and preventive maintenance in order to prevent an enormous electrical system failure in future. One of the defects of this type of oil filled cable termination is the lack of insulation oil inside it. The worst case if it becomes totally empty and at the same time there is no approach that can help to detect it. This paper presents the work carried out to find any possible method that can be used to detect a drying out of oil impregnated paper tape cable terminations. Furthermore, the diagnosis has to be used without destroying the terminations. Two diagnosis methods; infrared (IR) thermography and X-ray imaging are reviewed and the diagnosis result is presented. By comparison of two diagnosis method in this work, the X-ray imaging method is the best approach to observe and detect a drying out of paper tape oil impregnated cable terminations.