Simultaneous location of two partial discharge sources in power transformers based on acoustic emission using the modified binary partial swarm optimisation algorithm

One of the main methods for partial discharge (PD) source localisation in power transformers is acoustic emission measurements. This study describes a new method for detection and location of two simultaneous partial discharge sources in three-phase power transformer. In this method, acoustic signals are detected by sensors first and are then denoised using a wavelet transform. Finally, the two PD sources are localised using the modified binary partial swarm optimisation (MBPSO) method. To prove the efficiency of the two simultaneous PD localisations, the proposed algorithm is used to localise PD sources of the arc furnace transformer at Isfahan´s Mobarakeh steel company. For this purpose, the PD localisation problem converts to an optimisation problem. To prove the efficiency of the MBPSO algorithm, its performance is compared with a genetic algorithm. The PD localisation results confirm the efficiency of the proposed method for the detection and location of PD sources.