A novel MEMS sensor for online health monitoring of gas insulated switchgear systems

Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is the most commonly used gas insulating medium in gas insulated switchgears (GIS). Apart from being a very good insulator, SF6 is a potential greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of 22 800 over a period of 100 years. Therefore its leakage to the environment should be strictly monitored. And also partial discharge in the SF6 filled switchgear chambers can reduce the life and quality of insulation. The partial discharge detection should be done at the early stage to prevent the quality degradation and ultimate failure of the system. Therefore it becomes very essential to monitor the leakage and partial discharge detection in a GIS. In this work, we are proposing new methodology to detect both SF6 leakage and SF6 decomposition due to partial discharge using a MEMS sensor that detects gas at room temperature.