Quantitative analysis of insulation condition of oil-paper insulation based on frequency domain spectroscopy

In order to distinguish the influences of moisture and aging on the frequency domain dielectric response of oil-paper insulation and better apply frequency domain spectroscopy (FDS) to assess the insulation condition of power transformers, the oil-paper insulation samples with different moisture contents and different aging states were prepared in the laboratory. The FDS of the samples were tested and a group of characteristic parameters were extracted from dissipation factor (tanδ) curves which could be used to assess the moisture content and aging states of oil-paper insulation respectively. The quantitative relationship among characteristic parameters, degree of polymerization (DP) and moisture contents (Km.c) was accurately established. The observations show that the proposed characteristic parameters are sensitive to the moisture in 10-3-102Hz, while the aging states influence the characteristic parameters in 10-3-10-1Hz. Meanwhile, an exponential relationship equation which could be used to assess the oil-paper insulation condition was established among the characteristic parameters, DP and the moisture content. Finally, the evaluation technique proposed in this paper was used to diagnose the insulation condition of several field transformers in this way, and its validity was preliminary and reasonably verified.