An approach to improve power supply continuity throughout the estimation of insulated power cable life expectance indexes

Questions related to power quality definitely challenges engineers all over the world. Amongst these, the matter of supply reliability emerges as an important factor towards the improvement of continuity indexes such as the duration and frequency of interruptions. In such a way, information associated to the operational conditions of equipment such as transformers, cables, etc. have a relevant role in the overall electrical complex behavior. Focusing the insulated cables operational status, the occurrence of physical degradation phenomenon such as the so called water tree appears as a common cause for cable life expectance reduction. Having in mind this target, this paper considers the basis related to this effect and describes a procedure to estimate the actual conditions of a given cable. A hardware and software structure is then presented and first experimental results are described to highlight the proposal potentiality at finding operational indexes about the component life expectance.