A study on the characterization of the incipient failure behavior of insulators in power distribution line

A feasibility study on the characterization of incipient insulator failure for distribution fault prediction is presented. In this study, real distribution data was collected and analyzed to isolate incipient failure signatures or parameters which were expected to show distinct behaviors before and after failure incident. Several signal analysis methods were applied to isolate the parameters and a new strategy of analysis, the event-date concept, was also applied to find a relationship between non-harmonic and high frequency signal activities and imminent insulator failures. Keywords: Failure prediction, incipient fault, insulator, data analysis, predictive maintenance