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Preface
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Contents
1. Predictive maintenance
2. Diagnostic Insulation Tests
3. Insulation Degradation
4. Testing
5. Basics of insulation resistance and di electric absorption
6. Theory of Insulation Resistance and Dielectric Absorption
Measurement
7. Conductive leakage current (IL)
8. Capacitive charging leakage current (IC)
9. Polarization absorption leakage current (IA)
10. Predictive maintenance tests of Insulation
11. Spot-reading/short-time resistance test
12. Step voltage test
13. Dielectric-absorption/ time-resistance test
14. Dielectric Discharge Test
15. Testing connections in generators, transformers, motors, and
wiring
16. Temperature correction for testing rotating machines
17. Testing generators and motors
18. Testing transformers
19. Testing wiring and cable installations
20. Additional discharge based tests
21. Isothermal Relaxation Current Test (IRC Test)
22. EDA Test
23. Analysis of Practical value obtained during PI and DD test
24. Summary
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Diagnostic insulation testing for healthy Electrical
equipment
When it comes to the maintenance of plant Electrical machineries and equipment, it is
obvious that early detection of abnormality and appropriate timely corrective action can
save the equipment and production down time. The need to adopt the philosophy of being
pro active has been increased by the value put upon smooth operation when looking at
the total costs of any failure - including down-time or ‘customer minutes’ lost.
Predictive maintenance:-
There is a trend to adopt the techniques of 'Predictive' Maintenance - a development of
the 'Stitch in Time' philosophy that uses data from testing and monitoring to adjust the
maintenance activity rather than relying on fixed maintenance intervals. The hard-pressed
maintenance person needs to focus limited time and money into the areas that are most
critical and most at risk. The benefits come in both optimising the cost of the
maintenance programme and meeting high reliability and safety standards. This has been
widely adopted in Power and Petrochemical Industries around the world.
Diagnostic Insulation Tests:-
A major cause of Electric Motor failure is breakdown of the insulation. There is a range
of diagnostic techniques that can be applied to monitor insulation condition in order to
take timely maintenance action. These can be broken down into ‘simple’ DC Tests,
complex DC tests and AC tests. Simple DC tests include; Insulation Resistance Test,
Polarisation Index test and the Dielectric Discharge test. More complex DC tests include
the Isothermal Relaxation Current (or KDA) test and the EDA Test. The commonest AC.
based Insulation tests are the Power Factor or ‘Tan Delta’ Tests. Each test gives one
perspective on the overall condition of the equipment and their combination can form a
more complete picture than is provided by any one test. In the practical operational
world, of course, there is not the time to completely analyse a piece of equipment and
choices have to be made on the appropriate test strategy for different types of equipment.
This review will look at a range of tests aimed at field testing. The deterioration of the
Insulation has a number of interlinked causes and a test is looking for a response from the
insulation that is indicative of the condition of the insulation.
Insulation Degradation:-
There are 5 basic initiators for degradation of the insulation; electrical stress, mechanical
stress, chemical attack, thermal stress and finally environmental contamination. Normal
cycles of operation will lead to ‘aging’ through these mechanisms. Even air will oxidise
organic materials while the ingress of moisture, oil and salt will degrade effectiveness
even more rapidly. This is therefore one of the most important problems to pick up on a
routine test basis. Electrical stresses, particularly sustained over voltages or impulses
caused by faults will lead to discharges in voids which will thereby expand and can
develop into electrical treeing. The aging of insulation is a slow process of degradation as
these factors interact with each other in a gradual spiral of decline. At some point,
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dependent on both original and operating conditions the decline can speed up
significantly.
Testing:-
As insulation deteriorates leakage current may increase, the dielectric loss characteristic
will change and the degree of polarisation of the material will alter. Insulation tests look
for a change in one of these responses to indicate the deterioration.
Basics of insulation resistance and di electric absorption:-
Before going into the theory of Insulation Resistance and Dielectric Absorption
measurement let us study how a capacitor behaves during charging by a DC source
When a capacitor is charged from a DC energy source, an initial high current flows from
the energy source into the capacitor. This current flow rapidly decreases toward zero as
the capacitor absorbs it. At the same time, the voltage charge on the capacitor starts from
zero and rapidly increases toward the energy source voltage value (see Figure 1).
Once a steady state charge condition is reached, the current flow into the capacitor should
be zero, and the capacitor has a voltage charge equal to the source voltage value. Now, if
we had an "ideal" capacitor, no further current would flow in the circuit. Unfortunately,
there is no "ideal" capacitor obtainable, and a very small "leakage current" does flow in
the circuit. This "leakage current" is a result of electrons physically making their way
through the capacitor. In a correctly designed and manufactured unit, the "leakage
current" is composed of electrons that make their way through the dielectric itself, around
the edges and across the surfaces of the dielectric, and between the leads. Usually, the
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flow of electrons through the dielectric is far greater than the total of the other paths, and
therefore the other paths can be ignored.
This "leakage current" through the dielectric is usually converted to the expression
"insulation resistance" by using Ohm's law.
"Insulation resistance" then, is a measure of the ability of the dielectric to withstand the
passage of electrons through itself, and should not be confused with the inherent "series
resistance" of the capacitor. For ease of identification, this "insulation resistance" is also
referred to as the "parallel" or "shunt" resistance of the capacitor. See Figure 2 .
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Theory of Insulation Resistance and Dielectric Absorption Measurement:-
During insulation testing the high DC voltage generated by Megger causes a small
(micro-amps) current to flow through the conductor and the insulation. The amount of
current depends on the amount of voltage applied, the system’s capacitance, the total
resistance, and the temperature of the material. For a fixed voltage, the higher the current,
the lower the resistance (E=IR, R=E/I). The total resistance is the sum of the internal
resistance of the conductor (small value) plus the insulation resistance in M Ohms.
The value of insulation resistance read on the meter will be a function of following three
independent sub-currents.
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Conductive leakage current (IL):-
Conductive current is a small (micro-amp) amount of current that normally flows through
insulation, between conductors or from a conductor to ground. This current increases as
insulation deteriorates and becomes predominant after the absorption current (see Figure
1) vanishes. Because it is fairly steady and time independent, this is the most important
current for measuring insulation resistance.
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Table 2. Maintenance test voltages versus equipment ratings
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Step voltage test:-
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change (single reading) with respect to time, while the step
voltage test looks for trends in resistance, with respect to
varying test voltages.
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indicates problems with the insulation. When test time is
constrained, a shortcut to the polarization index test is the
dielectric absorption ratio (60/30) second test.
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Dielectric Discharge Test:-
An example of a still more special-ized test, recently
developed by EdF, France’s national power utility, is the
“Dielectric Discharge Test” (DD). Unlike more familiar
tests, this measures the current that flows during discharge
of the test sample. It is especially applicable to multi-
layered insulation. The test item is first charged at high
voltage until full absorption has taken place (10 to 30
minutes). At this time, capacitance is fully charged and the
alignment of dipoles (absorption) is essentially complete.
Only leakage current continues to flow. When the external
voltage field ceases, molecules will “relax” and return to
their original random configuration, constituting
reabsorption Current. This discharge current is measured 60
seconds after the insulation test is finished. At this time,
capacitance is discharged and voltage has collapsed, so the
charge stored in the dipoles can be viewed independently of
the “masking” currents that are dominant during an
insulation test. A high reabsorption current indicates the
insulation has been contaminated, while a low current
indicates it is relatively clean. The precise definition of
Dielectric Discharge is the ratio
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problem. Following table indicates acceptable DD value for
a healthy insulation
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For testing armature and field winding insulation resistance
at various temperatures, IEEE recommends the following
insulation resistance formula.
Rm = Kt x ( kV + 1), Rm - Minimum insulation
resistance corrected to 40°C (104°F) in M Ohms , Kt -
Insulation resistance temperature coefficient at winding
temperature, obtained from Figure 10 , kV - Rated
machine terminal to terminal voltage in kilovolts. For a
three phase system tested with the other two phases
grounded, the resistance recorded for each phase should be
divided by two. Then, the resulting value can be compared
with the recommended minimum insulation resistance
(Rm).
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Motor Nameplate Minimum Acceptable
Voltage Rating Resistance
0-208 100,000
208-240 200,000
240-600 300,000
600-1000 1 M Ohm
1000-2400 2 M Ohm
2400-5000 3 M Ohm
Testing transformers:-
When testing single-phase transformers, test winding to
winding, winding to ground, or test one winding at a time
with all others grounded. For three phase transformers,
substitute E with EP-P (for delta transformers) or Ep-n (for
wye transformers) and kVA with kVA3Ø rating of the
winding under test. For determining minimum insulation
resistance use the following formula.
Table 8. Transformers insulation resistance equations
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When testing wires or cables, they should be disconnected
from panels and machinery to keep them isolated. The wires
and cables should be tested against each other and against
ground (see Figure 4 on page 4). The Insulated Power Cable
Engineers Association (IPCEA) provides the following
formula that suggests minimum insulation resistance values.
R = K x Log10 (D/d)
R - M. Ohms per 1000 feet (305 meters) of cable. Based on
dc test potential of 500 volts, applied for one minute at
15.6°C (60°F) temperature)
K - Insulation material constant. (For example: Impregnated
Paper-2640, Varnished Cambric-2460, Thermoplastic
Polyethlene-50000, Composite Polyethylene- 30000)
D - Outside diameter of conductor insulation for single
conductor wire and cable D = d + 2c + 2b diameter of
single conductor cable
d - Diameter of conductor, c - Thickness of conductor
insulation, b - Thickness of jacket insulation
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This test has been derived for testing cables and grew out of
the problems associated with pressure testing of plastic
cables. The installed base of these cables from the 1970’s
and early ‘80’s are particularly problematic. The IRC test
uses a 1kV test voltage for 30 minutes to polarise the
dielectric. The polymer polarisation traps charge at specific
discrete energy levels and during the discharge process
these energy levels give rise to different time constants in
the discharge current. The major use of the effect in the IRC
test is to look for the time constant associated with water
trees in degraded XLPE cable material. The ‘relaxation
current’ occurring after the capacitance has been discharged
is digitised for processing in PC based software. The
software processing is based on a modeling technique,
which converts the current into Charge and plots this
Charge against Time. The total charge plot is then treated as
a composite of standard shapes whose time constants are
‘fitted’ to the composite curve by iteration. Aging of the
cable is identified by the relative values of the time
constants. The test was initially developed using artificially
aged cable and has now been applied to operational XLPE
cables.
EDA Test:-
This test was also developed for motors and generators, but
is of much wider applicability than the simple DD test. The
EDA ( This test was developed by French Electrical
Association EDA ) test also monitors current, voltage and
capacitance, and the software calculates a wider range of
parameters from both charging and discharge cycle at two
voltages, to give enhanced information on insulation
condition. The test therefore combines attributes of PI, Step
Voltage and Dielectric Discharge tests to give the broadest
diagnostic information it can. The software also takes
information on insulation type and motor operation history
to assist with the diagnosis.
Motor 1- 11 KV
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Values displayed by instrument for PI - 1 Min
reading = 5.21 G Ohm
10 Min
reading = 38.8 G Ohm
PI = 7.45
Motor 2- 6.6 KV
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Calculated PI: 81.0 / 16.7 = 4.85 which is equal to value
shown by test equipment
Calculated DD: 0.045799 x 10 --3 Mili Amps / (1100 Volt x
0.07 x 10--6 Farad)
= 0.594 which is close to value displayed by
instrument 0.65
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