Degradation of XLPE cable by water trees gives rise to harmonics in the loss current. The authors are engaged in development of diagnostic methods for water tree degradation utilizing these harmonic components. As a result of this development, the following was discovered. The harmonic components occurring in the loss current provide an extremely good indication of the state of degradation. Harmonic components arise as a result of the nonlinear voltagecurrent characteristic of water trees. An equivalent circuit which incorporates this nonlinearity of water trees faithfully reproduces the loss current waveforms obtained in experiments. When a voltage at a frequency differing from commercial frequencies is superposed, a degradation signal occurs at a characteristic frequency.
Water tree is one of the degradation aspects of XLPE cables used for under-ground distribution or transmission lines. We have developed the loss current method using 3rd harmonic in AC loss current for cable diagnosis. Harmonic components in loss current arise as a result of the non-linear voltage-current characteristics of water trees. We confirmed that the 3rd harmonic in AC loss current had good correlation with water tree growth and break down strength. After that, we have applied this method to the actual 66 kV XLPE cable lines. Up to now, the number of the application results is more than 120 lines.In this method, it is sometimes said that the degradation signal (3rd harmonic in loss current) is affected by the 3rd harmonic in the test voltage. To indicate and solve this problem, we investigated the extent of influence by 3rd harmonic in the test voltage, and found the rule of the influence. As a result, we developed a new technique of harmonic-noise reduction in loss current method that enabled a more highly accurate diagnosis and confirmed the effectiveness of this new technique by simulations and experiments with actual cables. CV
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