Impact of Advanced Bushing Diagnostic Techniques on Operation Reliability and Maintenance Strategy

The reliability of power transformers is crucial for the safety operation of the power system. Detection of incipient faults, as well as natural aging, is the key to reduce the failure risk, which gives the operators adequate margin to perform maintenance before reaching a critical failure. Routine maintenance consists of a few testing techniques to check whether mechanical and electrical components fulfill the minimum threshold requirement. In addition, there are various advanced diagnostic testings that are capable of giving more precise condition indications of a transformer in thermal, electrical, and mechanical aspects. The reliability of transformers can thus be enhanced with the help of advanced diagnostic testings. However, in practice, it is often costly to perform the advanced testings and the effectiveness is hard to verify due to the lack of relevant cases and case studies. According to the published statistics, the failure rate is only around 0.1% - 0.2% per year. In this project, a widely accepted insulation condition diagnostic method, Dielectric Frequency Response, DFR was investigated in aspects of cost and return. Testing objects were a group of transformer bushings in three HVDC substations. Reliability is enhanced by identifying incipient bushing defects that cannot be detected by other routine testing techniques. By analyzing the cost and return of the DFR testing, the transition of the current maintenance strategy towards reliability-centered is in position.