The life expectancy of a transformer is largely depended on the service life of transformer polymer insulation materials. Nowadays, several papers have reported that the traditional system poles obtained from polarization and depolarization current (PDC) data can be used to assess the condition of transformer insulation systems. However, the traditional system poles technique only provides limited ageing information for transformer polymer insulation. In this paper, the modified system poles obtained from PDC data are proposed to assess the ageing condition of transformer polymer insulation. The aim of the work is to focus on reporting a comparative investigation on the performance of modified system poles and traditional system poles for assessing the ageing condition of a transformer polymer insulation system. In the present work, a series of experiments have been performed under controlled laboratory conditions. The PDC measurement data, degree of polymerization (DP) and moisture content of the oil-immersed polymer pressboard specimens were carefully monitored. It is observed that, compared to the relationships between traditional system poles and DP values, there are better correlations between the modified system poles and DP values, because the modified system poles can obtain much more ageing information on transformer polymer insulation. Therefore, the modified system poles proposed in the paper are more suitable for the diagnosis of the ageing condition of transformer polymer insulation.
Keywords: ageing condition; modified system poles; polarization and depolarization current (PDC); traditional system poles; transformer polymer insulation materials.