Improved condition assessment of XLPE insulated cables using the isothermal relaxation current technique

Well-known procedures using the isothermal relaxation current method (IRC) use an empirically-derived ageing factor (the A-factor) to estimate the condition of cables. The A-factor is calculated from plots of the product of instantaneous value of IRC and the time to that value from the start of the current, against the log of time. A-factors are computed from a standard formula using constants determined from curve fits of measured depolarization currents. From measurements of the breakdown strength of samples of real and degraded cables it has been found that A-factors do not provide reliable estimates of XLPE cable condition. However, if semi-conducting material of the cable insulation is known and cables are classified according to semi-conducting material type it is possible to get better correlation between conditions of cables as indicated by A-factors and AC breakdown voltage. This paper contains a novel analysis of result from previous researcher and also includes result from tests on other cables. The refined procedure is found to give reasonable value of A-factor for all cable tested.