Abstract 1 (stress vs distance)

Mineral oil has been widely used in liquid insulation of power transformer. However, it is poorly
biodegradable and could cause serious contamination to the environment if a spill occurs. With
increasingly strict environmental rules and regulations, there is many interests from industries to
use more environmental friendly oil. Vegetable oils such as Palm Oil (PO) and Coconut oil (CO)
are being considered as substitutions to mineral oil in power transformers. This is due to their
better environmental performance, non-toxic and high fire point as compare to mineral oil. To be
considered as worthwhile insulating liquid for power transformers, a number of studies had been
carried out such as lightning impulse with stand voltage. Lightning impulse strength is important
for insulation design of power transformer and routine test for high voltage power transformer in
industries. This paper covers the testing of the lightning impulse breakdown voltages of Coconut
Oil (CO) and Palm Oil (PO) relative to Mineral Oil (MO) under quasi-uniform field. In this
study, a test cell consists of vertically sphere to sphere electrodes with 3.8 mm gap distance
according to IEC 60897 was used. Copper sphere to sphere electrodes configuration with
diameter 12.7 mm was used to represent quasi-uniform fields inside a transformer. Negative
lightning impulse voltage with waveform 1.2/50 s is applied to get the breakdown voltages of
CO, PO and MO. The PO used in this paper was Refined, Bleached and Deodorized Palm Oil
(RBDPO) Olein type. Three samples of RBDPO, one sample each for CO and MO were
examined in this study. Influence of various testing methods on the measured lightning
breakdown voltage was studied and the 1% and 50% lightning withstand voltage for all samples
were obtained based on Weibull distribution fitting on the cumulative probability plot built up
using approximately 50 impulse shots. The results indicated that lightning breakdown voltages of
RBDPO and CO in quasi uniform field, are comparable to those of mineral oil. Besides that, the
1% breakdown voltage probabilities of RBDPO for all samples are just about nearer to the MO.
Furthermore, understanding the performance of breakdown voltages and electric field
distribution in the insulating oil of a transformer during transient is important. Therefore, in this
paper, electric field analysis was performed to evaluate the effect of the input voltage condition
on electric field distribution. ANSYS software was used for perform electric field calculations
based on the finite element methods. A 3-D modeling of test cell with palm oil and coconut
properties were used in the simulation. By using FEM, an electrical stress of the dielectric liquid
and the maximum value of electrical field stress in the model electrode systems were simulated.
The relationships between impulse breakdowns voltage with electrical stress were being
compared.

Keyword: vegetable oil, lightning impulse, electric field, breakdown voltage, finite element,
power transformer, transient, quasi uniform, ANSYS