Assessment of Oil-Paper Insulation Aging Using Frequency Domain Spectroscopy and Moisture Equilibrium Curves

Moisture content and aging of oil-paper insulation are two important factors that cause deterioration of the insulation performance of power transformers. The water molecules and aging products are polar, which affects the dielectric response characteristics of the insulation system. Currently, the dielectric response testing technology has realized non-destructive evaluation of the moisture content of transformer insulation. However, the changes in the dielectric response caused by aging products are easily concealed by the influence of moisture, which makes the diagnostic technology ineffective for use in the evaluation of the aging of the oil-paper system. In order to avoid drawback, a new method utilizing frequency domain dielectric spectroscopy (FDS) and the water balance characteristics of the oil-paper insulation is proposed in this paper to evaluate the aging state of oil-paper insulation. The aging of oil-paper insulation will affect the water balance between oil and paper. In this paper, the experimental studies have shown that the water distribution coefficient between oil and paper and the degree of polymerization (DP) of the insulating paper shows a significant linear relationship. Accordingly, in this paper, FDS curves were used to evaluate the moisture content in the insulating paper, oil samples were taken to measure the moisture content in oil, and then the ratio of moisture content in oil and paper were calculated as the aging characteristic parameter. The linear relationship between the characteristic parameter and DP was used to evaluate the aging state of oil-paper insulation. The feasibility of the proposed method is preliminarily verified using oil-paper insulation samples at different aging states and with different moisture levels in the laboratory.