Comparing pulse-height and pulse-shape analysis of partial discharge signals

Abstract

This paper has the purpose to provide a first contribution to the investigation of the perspectives offered by partial-discharge (PD) pulse-shape recording systems in insulation diagnosis and quality control. In particular, the capability to provide a stochastic inference having accuracy levels comparable with those achievable by PD-pulse height and phase analyzers is inferred. This result is obtained varying typical set-up parameters for the two types of measuring systems, that is, dead time, gain and low-level discriminator. The behaviour of the two systems is compared resorting to the estimates of the scale and shape parameters of the Weibull distributions of pulse-charge height recorded from corona and surface discharges.