Electric Power Systems Research 108 (2014) 315321

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Electric Power Systems Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/epsr

Metal-oxide surge arrester monitoring and diagnosis by

self-organizing maps
George R. S. Lira , Edson G. Costa, Tarso V. Ferreira
Department of Electrical Engineering, Federal University of Campina Grande, Av. Aprigio Veloso, 882, Universitario, 58.429-140, Campina Grande, PB, Brazil

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The main metal-oxide surge arrester are usually monitored by measuring the total leakage current
Received 5 September 2013 and decomposing it into a capacitive component and a resistive component. However, these tech-
Received in revised form niques present some limitations which make their implementation in the eld quite difcult. This paper
28 November 2013
describes a monitoring technique based on classifying the harmonic characteristics of the leakage current.
Accepted 30 November 2013
Self-organizing maps have been used in the classication process. Several station classes arresters were
Available online 20 December 2013
tested in the laboratory and their leakage current signals were recorded. Six different types of articial
imperfections were created in the arresters in order to assess the technical capability to discriminate
Keywords:
Arresters
arresters operating under different eld conditions. The self-organizing maps are able to identify defec-
Diagnosis tive arresters with certainty of almost 98%. The results show that the technique is feasible for monitoring
Feature extraction the condition of metal-oxide surge arresters.
Leakage current 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Monitoring
Neural networks

1. Introduction
Metal-oxide surge arresters are used to protect electrical power
systems against overvoltages. Thus, they contribute decisively to
the increase in reliability and continuity of power system operation.
Due to the importance of arresters, it is necessary to develop and
improve techniques and procedures to monitor and diagnose surge
arresters operation conditions correctly and accurately. Since surge
arrester failure leads to non-programmed power supply interrup-
tion, damage to other substation equipment and risks to technical
personnel may happen.
Arresters monitoring and diagnosis is normally based on the
measurement and decomposition of the total leakage current of
the surge arrester during the steady state operation. The leak-
age current is usually decomposed into its capacitive and resistive
components, since the resistive component and its third harmonic
present signicant variations on the magnitude and waveshape
proportional to the arrester degradation level [14]. The analysis
and interpretation of the variations of the resistive component are
the basis of most of the common monitoring techniques described
in the literature.
The main problem of the methods based on total leakage current
decomposition is the need to measure the applied voltage on the
surge arrester or estimating phase angle difference between the
leakage current and the applied voltage. To measure the applied
voltage on site is a difcult task, that requires accessing and con-
necting data acquisition systems to measurement devices (such as
potential transformers). The inuence of neighboring transmission
lines on the measurement and the inuence of parasite capaci-
tances are additional problems to reckon with [4]. These problems
can impair the condition monitoring of the arrester. There are
some methods [2] that claim to overcome the above mentioned
difculties; yet they make use of a series of simplications and
approximations that could comprise the accuracy of the results.
A technique developed recently is able to consistently monitor and
diagnose the arresters condition, but it requires off-line processing
and a database of known surge arrester operation conditions [5].
Consequently, it is quite evident that there is a need to develop a
condition monitoring and diagnosis technique that can be applied
to arresters in service effortlessly, showing reliable results which
will help the technical substation personnel with their predictive
and preventive maintenance activities. In this paper, a technique
is proposed for surge arrester monitoring and diagnosis, that is
based on the analysis of the features extracted from the total
leakage current. The implementation can be made on embedded
systems; besides previous arresters operation conditions database
are unnecessary. The voltage measurement is not necessary, either.
2. Proposed technique

Corresponding author. Tel.: +55 83 21011304; fax: +55 83 21011015. The harmonic distortion level and the total current magnitude
E-mail address: george@dee.ufcg.edu.br (G.R.S. Lira). (especially, its resistive component) are important indicators of

0378-7796/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2013.11.026
316 G.R.S. Lira et al. / Electric Power Systems Research 108 (2014) 315321
TLC
End.
Acquisition
Harmonic
Components Classification
Extraction
Database Classifier
Building Training
Fig. 1. Proposed technique diagram.
the arrester degradation level [3,4]. Thus, it seems reasonable to
extract features of the total current in order to develop a classier
of defects or failures. However, it is noteworthy that the approach
proposed here differs from those commonly used in the literature,
i.e., approaches based on the decomposition of the capacitive and
resistive components of the leakage current. In the proposed tech-
nique the characteristics used for monitoring and diagnosis are
extracted from the total leakage current and not from the resis-
tive component. A number of practical and technical restrictions
are consequently avoided.
In Fig. 1, an overview of the proposed technique is presented.
Initially, total leakage current of arresters are obtained either in
the laboratory or in the eld. Then the signal feature extraction
(i.e., relevant amplitude harmonic components) is carried out.
Subsequently, the extracted features are organized in patterns to
be applied to the classication system, which is based on self-
organizing maps (SOM).
3. Total leakage current acquisition
The total leakage current was obtained from maximum contin-
uous operating voltage (MCOV) tests carried out in the laboratory
for station class surge arresters. This voltage is the maximum des-
ignated root-mean-square (rms) value of power-frequency voltage
that may be applied continuously between the terminals of the
arrester [6]. The diagram of the experimental arrangement used
in the tests is shown in Fig. 2. It consists of an adjustable volt-
age source, a voltage regulator, a step-up transformer, a protective
resistor, a capacitive voltage divider and the test object (the surge
arresters) in series with a shunt resistor. The voltage divider was
used only to monitor the applied voltage. The current signal was
obtained from the shunt resistor and it was stored in a data acqui-
sition system.
3.1. Evaluated samples
It was tested surge arrester samples with distinct physical,
electrical and operational characteristics with the purpose of eval-
uate the generalization capability of the proposed monitoring and
diagnosis technique. Some electrical data of the evaluated surge
arresters are shown in Table 1.
The operational characteristics were evaluated by the creation
of seven different types of articial imperfections in the tested
samples. Typical failures were caused in order to reproduce crit-
ical conditions in the eld and during transportation [3,5,710].
As described in [5,7,8], imperfection types were: sealing loss,
supercial pollution, varistors degradation, internal humidity,
displacement along the active column, and non-uniform voltage
distribution.
Table 1
Characteristics of the evaluated surge arresters.
Surge arrester Rated voltage (kV) MCOV (kV)
Type A 96 76
Type B 72 42
The evaluated surge arresters operating conditions are
described below.
3.2. Simulated arresters operating conditions
The rst condition considered in the testing of surge arresters
was its ideal condition. In this case, the tested surge arresters pre-
sented characteristics and behaviors similar to the nominal ones.
Then, typical failures found in surge arresters were articially cre-
ated in the tested samples. The faulty conditions are [5,7,8]:
Sealing loss: characterized by the loss of physical isolation
between the environment and the interior of the surge arrester,
allowing the exchange of gases. The loss of sealing was created
articially in the laboratory by opening channels between the
environment and the interior of the arrester and allowing the
exchange of heat and gas;
Internal humidity: can occur in surge arresters due to failures
in the manufacturing process at the moment of sealing, or by
sealing losses caused by the natural aging process of the equip-
ment. To simulate this defect, the arresters were opened and
water was sprayed on the varistor column. Then, the arrester was
re-assembled;
Supercial pollution: occurs due to the presence of pollution on the
surge arrester housing. To simulate this defect, a salt suspension
was sprayed on the entire porcelain housing of the surge arrester;
Varistor degradation: can occur due to natural or precocious varis-
tor aging. To simulate this failure in laboratory, damaged varistors
were inserted into the arrester active column. The varistors were
damaged by the electrical stress produced by the application of
current impulses and overvoltages;
Displacement along the active column: generally occurs due to
inadequate transportation or storage of surge arresters. However,
this kind of problem may be caused by the manufacturing process
as a result of assembly errors. In the simulation, displacements in
the active column were performed;
Non-uniform voltage distribution: occurs due to failures in the
arrester project or to supercial pollution on the arresters. In the
simulation of this kind of failure, several assemblies were used
with internal short-circuited varistors; therefore, modifying the
electrical eld distribution along the arrester.
4. Harmonic components extraction
The methodology consisted in extracting relevant information
from current signal to identify the traces that allow the proposed
classication system to determine the surge arrester operating con-
ditions. The harmonic level distortion and the magnitude of the
total current in surge arresters bring out the signicant character-
istics of the surge arrester degradation level [14].
Generally, the harmonic components of a signal is obtained from
the application of Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), more specif-
ically, the suitable and numerically efcient algorithm, FFT (Fast
Fourier Transform). Although, this algorithm is hard to implement,
especially, on embedded systems, it does present some limita-
tions like the ones observed in [11]. Thus, in this paper, another
implementation of the DFT was used. This implementation is called
Goertzel algorithm, which presents some of the FFT limitations;
 G.R.S. Lira et al. / Electric Power Systems Research 108 (2014) 315321 317

Fig. 2. Experimental arrangement diagram.

however with the appropriate adjustment of the signal (e.g., uti-
lization of an even number of cycles), the algorithm yields suitable
results, i.e., it is capable of estimating the signal harmonic compo-
nents with better accuracy.
4.1. Goertzel algorithm
The Goertzel algorithm (GA) is an optimized version of the DFT,
which is given by (1). It is largely used to estimate a few set of har-
monic components (magnitudes and phase angles) of a signal. In
this case, the GA requires less computational effort than that of the
FFT (preserving the accuracy of the results). This behavior is very
important for the implementation of the technique on embedded
systems that, normally, have scarce resources. Nevertheless, this
good behavior degenerates proportionally according to the amount
of harmonic components to estimate [12]. Thus, as can be seen
below, the GA is suitable for solving the problem under analysis.

N1
S(k) = s[n]WNkn k = 0, 1, . . ., N 1,
n=0
where s[n] is the digitized version of the analyzed signal, composed
by N samples equally spaced, and WN is given by:
 2   2 
WN = ej2/N = cos j sin . (2)
N N
Normally, the GA is implemented from the following recur-
sive difference equation. The harmonic components are obtained in
n = N, and performing S(k) = y[N]. For n = 0, the term y[n 1] is zero.
5. Patterns organization
Once the total current harmonic components are extracted, it is
possible to build a patterns database of all features extracted from
the measured signals. This database is utilized in the training or
testing of the surge arrester operating condition classier.
As reported in [5], the phase angles did not provide good
correlation between the signal and the arrester condition, and
thus they were discarded in the composition of patterns. Like-
wise, the fundamental component can be omitted from the nal
pattern structure, because the normalization of the harmonic
amplitudes in relation to the fundamental component was properly
built.
With these pre-processing phases, the dimensionality of the
problem is reduced to only 4 input variables, which correspond
to the normalized amplitudes of the remaining harmonic compo-
nents. Finally, two patterns database are constructed. The rst one
is used to identify just the surge arrester operation condition, i.e.,
whether the surge is defective (label def) or not (label ok). The
(1)
second database is composed by labels that identify not only the
arrester condition, but the type of failure present in the equip-
ment. In Table 2 the labels for all evaluated operation conditions
are presented.
Therefore, the general format of the databases is shown in
Table 3, where the section Inputs refers to the normalized har-
monic components amplitudes of the arrester current and the
section Output refers to the arrester operation condition labels as
shown in Table 2.

y[n] = WNk y[n 1] + s[n]. (3)

Table 2
After several tests with the data obtained in the laboratory, it Labels for surge arrester operation condition.
was observed that it is possible to represent metal-oxide surge
Operation condition Label
arrester behavior on low-current region as from the sum of the
rst ve odd harmonic components of the signal. Accordingly, the Label type 1
Good ok
following model is used to represent arrester behavior the low-
Defective def
current region of operation:
Label type 2

5 Sealing loss est
s(t) = Ai cos[(2i 1)t + i ]. (4) Internal humidity umi
Supercial pollution pol
i=1
Varistor degradation deg
where Ai and  i are the magnitudes and phase angles of the rst Displacement along the active column des
Non-uniform voltage distribution dis
ve harmonic components of the signal.
318 G.R.S. Lira et al. / Electric Power Systems Research 108 (2014) 315321
Table 3
General format of evaluated databases.
Inputs Output
A2 /A1 A3 /A1 A4 /A1 A5 /A1 Label
6. Operation condition classier
In the present work, a operation condition classier based on
a special kind of articial neural networks (ANNs) is used. This
is called self-organizing map (SOM) [13]. The SOM network is
based on competitive learning and employs a feed-forward non-
supervised training algorithm. This algorithm brings in the great
advantage of the SOM networks in connection with the tradi-
tional ANN, like the MLP (multi-layer perceptron), which, normally,
requires a signicative amount of patterns to identify or detect
features on evaluated data.
In SOM networks, the neurons are spatially disposed on nodes of
a neural grid (usually one-dimensional or two-dimensional) with
hexagonal, rectangular or triangular topological forms. Each neu-
ron is connected to the network inputs. The network has two layers,
in its basic form: the input layer I reads the input vector (input
patterns), presenting the information to the network, so it can be
classied; and the output layer U, which gives a response. The net-
work input corresponds to a vector in the d-dimensional space in
Rd , represented by: xk = [ 1 , . . .,  d ]T , (k = 1, . . ., n), where n is the
number of input vectors. Each neuron j for the output layer holds
a code vector w, also in Rd space, associated to the input vector
xk , wj = [wj1 , . . ., wjd ]T .
The neurons of the SOM network are locally interconnected by
a relation of neighborhood, determining the map topology. In a
two-dimensional map, the vicinity may be hexagonal or rectan-
gular. In Fig. 3 it is possible to see an arrangement with rectangular
neighborhood of dimension X Y. Fig. 3 also shows the winner neu-
ron (green) and its nearby neurons (six red units). The shape of
this arrangement inuences directly the adaptation of the SOM
network, where the hexagonal model traditionally provides best
results than the rectangular ones [13].
6.1. Training algorithm
The sequential learning algorithm of the SOM network com-
prises three stages: (i) competition, (ii) cooperation and (iii)
adaptation. In the competition stage, for each input data presented
to network, the neurons compute the activation values where the
one with the highest value is the winner of the competition or the
best match unit (BMU). In the cooperation stage, the vicinity of the
BMU is dened according to a neighborhood function h(t). In the
last stage (adaptation), the code vectors (weights) of the winner
neuron and of its neighborhood are properly adjusted. With the
Fig. 3. Example of bi-dimensional (X Y) SOM network.
Fig. 4. Typical waveforms of some measured leakage currents.
adjustment of the code vectors, the response of the winner neuron
is better for a subsequent application of the same input vector. So,
the input data provide a topological organization of the network
neurons.
In this phase, the available harmonic component patterns were,
randomly, applied to SOM input, so that, the network will be topo-
logically organized to recognize new patterns and group them
according to their similarities.
6.2. Classication/diagnosis module
In the classication/diagnosis module, the methodology to iden-
tify the correlation level between each class (defective or not) of the
trained network with the evaluated signal is implemented. So, it is
possible to determine the arrester condition.
Additionally, during the training phase, the classication mod-
ule can be used to yield an estimative of the classier hit ratio.
This is possible because in the training phase some arresters con-
ditions and current signals pairs are known in advance. Thus, if the
arrester condition estimated by network coincides with the desired
condition, the classier hits in the arrester diagnose. Otherwise, the
classication error rate is increased.
7. Results
Initially, leakage currents signals were obtained in the labora-
tory tests to each on of the simulated arrester operation conditions.
In this phase, 880 records were measured. In Fig. 4 some (just to
make easy the visualization) typical waveforms of the measured
leakage currents are shown. As can be seen, the peak currents were
quite closer, except to the most critical failure (varistor degrada-
tion), which it presents a slightly higher value. So, to perform the
arresters monitoring from the peak currents seems unappropri-
ated. On the other hand, the distortion levels have presented more
signicative differences, as it is evident in the instant of time of
15 ms. Similar behaviors were obtained to the others measured
leakage currents. Thus, the results motivate the thesis that is possi-
ble to perform the arrester monitoring by the analysis of harmonic
content of the leakage current.
The feature extraction algorithm (Goertzel algorithm) was
applied to the measured signals with the purpose of obtain the sig-
nicative harmonic components. Due to the amount of measured
signals, it was impracticable to present all the estimated harmonic
components. Thus, it was resolved to present the mean value of
each evaluated harmonic component for each type of simulated
failure. Additionally, the standard deviations for each harmonic
components is presented. Table 4 shows the normalized estimated
components for each one of the type of evaluated surge arresters
 G.R.S. Lira et al. / Electric Power Systems Research 108 (2014) 315321 319

Table 4
Normalized harmonic components of the measured leakage currents.

Arrester Type failure Mean and standard deviation of normalized harmonic components

3a 3a 5a 5a 7a 7a 9a 9a

Type A Sealing loss 9.29E02 1.75E03 2.59E01 1.02E02 8.76E02 9.16E03 1.54E02 2.36E03
Supercial pollution 8.36E02 1.56E03 2.60E01 5.33E03 9.33E02 4.26E03 2.05E02 1.48E03
Varistor degradation 1.13E01 3.02E03 2.33E01 5.78E03 9.25E02 1.10E02 2.19E02 6.44E03
Internal humidity 1.52E01 4.15E03 2.29E01 7.22E03 5.90E02 9.87E03 1.55E02 2.28E03
Varistors displacement 8.55E02 1.38E03 2.61E01 5.91E03 1.03E01 3.68E03 1.49E02 9.46E04
Non-uniform voltage distribution 9.18E02 2.83E03 3.04E01 6.47E03 9.96E02 1.02E02 1.65E02 1.58E03

Type B Sealing loss 2.24E02 7.34E04 1.74E01 7.10E03 8.74E02 1.60E02 1.01E02 1.49E03
Supercial pollution 2.54E02 7.61E04 1.62E01 5.48E03 1.03E01 3.52E03 1.49E02 1.44E03
Varistor degradation 3.03E02 8.44E04 2.15E01 3.96E03 1.33E01 5.03E03 2.64E02 2.64E03
Internal humidity 7.49E02 2.60E02 1.90E01 1.75E02 9.96E02 3.89E02 1.42E02 3.22E03
Non-uniform voltage distribution 2.90E02 3.31E03 2.14E01 2.31E02 1.27E01 1.96E02 1.06E02 4.79E03

(type A and B). This table is very useful to point out how is quite
difcult develop general and trivial rules to determine the surge
arresters operating conditions, i.e., it is a justicative to applica-
tion of complex systems of classication, like the articial neural
networks (e.g., self-organizing maps).
Following, the capability of the proposed model in (4) was eval-
uated for representation of the leakage current signal obtained in
laboratory. For this, the harmonic components extracted from the
measured current signals were applied to (4) to yields the estimated
total current signal. Subsequently, it was applied the R2 statistics
[14] to evaluate the level of concordance between both the mea-
sured and the estimated signals. An R2 value, closer to 1, means a
close agreement between the signals. For all evaluated situations,
the R2 was found to be between 0.9899 and 0.9994. Therefore, the
proposed technique accounted for the measured data with good
accuracy. In Fig. 5, it is illustrated a pair of measured and estimated
leakage current signals. It was observed that the signals are com-
pletely overlapped. Similar results were obtained for all measured
signals.
Afterwards four training databases from the data obtained in the
lab tests for the surge arresters type A and B were built. The rst
one consisted of the features extracted from arresters type A with
labels type 1, which are shown in Table 2 (the database A1). The
database A2 corresponds to a set of features of the arrester A with
labels type 2. The same idea was employed to the composition of B1
and B2 databases. The databases A1 and A2 have 480 records, while
the databases B1 and B2 have 400 records. So, from the databases
A1, A2 (for the arresters type A), B1 and B2 (for the arresters type B),
the performance of the proposed arrester operation classier was
evaluated.
Three comparative parameters were employed to evaluate the
proposed classier. The rst one is quantization error (Eq ) [13],
Fig. 5. Comparison between the measured and estimated leakage currents.
which corresponds to the average of the error related to differences
between the characteristics vector (xk ) and the code vector (wBMU ),
which is the winner code vector in the competitive process to input
xk :
n 
  xk wBMU 

Eq = . (5)
n
k=1
The other comparative parameter was the correct classication
rate (CCR), which is dened as follows and corresponds to the accu-
racy of the classier.
100 c
CCR = , (6)
t
where c is the number of data input correctly classied and t is the
total number of data input.
The last evaluated parameter was the average time of processing
(Tp) obtained after 100 consecutive executions of the training algo-
rithm for each evaluated database.
During the training process the network size was modied, the
aim of which was to nd the best size for the proposed classier. The
choice by the network size does not follow well dened rules. There
are some heuristics rules, but it is consensus among researchers
that one must test several network congurations before decid-
ing which are the best parameters for a specic data set [13]. For
large data sets, normally, large maps are required. However, there
are losses in algorithm training performance. An equilibrium point
between the map (grid) size and its accuracy must be found. So, the
hit ratio (CCR), the quantization error (Eq ), and training time (Tp ) of
the network were plotted for SOM nets with grids varying from
3 3 to 24 24 (n n, means n neurons on the two-dimensional
space). The parameters of comparison were normalized in relation
to the maximum value obtained during the tests to make the anal-
ysis independent from the computational system and make it easy
visualize the results.
In the Figs. 69 the evolution of comparative parameters in
function of the neural grid dimension are plotted. Figs. 6 and 8
correspond to the results of the surge arrester condition classier
when it was used to diagnose the surge arrester as defective or not,
i.e., when the network was trained and tested with databases with
labels type 1 (A1 and B1), as shown in Table 2. In Figs. 7 and 9,
the results of the classication system for the databases with labels
type 2 (A2 and B2) are shown. In this case, it was evaluated the abil-
ity of the classier in the identication of the type of failure that
occurs on the surge arrester.
As shown in Fig. 6, the classier yields hit ratios approximately
equal to 0.98 (98%) for neural grids greater than 15 15. Similar
results were obtained with database B1 for neural grids greater
than 11 11, as shown in Fig. 8. Regarding the quantization error,
it can be observed that the error stabilized around 0.2, does not
320 G.R.S. Lira et al. / Electric Power Systems Research 108 (2014) 315321
Fig. 6. Evolution of the classier comparative parameters for database A1.
Fig. 7. Evolution of the classier comparative parameters for database A2.
Fig. 8. Evolution of the classier comparative parameters for database B1.
presenting signicative variations for larger neural grids. The
processing time did not blow up for this size of neural grid.
Consequently, the classier can determine the operation condition
(defective or not) of the surge arresters types A and B with higher
accuracy for relatively smaller neural grids.
Fig. 9. Evolution of the classier comparative parameters for database B2.
Fig. 10. Classier trained for database A1.
The classier system presents good results, too, when identi-
fying the type of failure present on surge arresters A and B among
those simulated in the laboratory. Hit ratios approximately equal to
0.98 (98%) were obtained with the databases A2 and B2 for neural
grids greater than 16 16, as shown in Figs. 7 and 9, respectively.
As a result, the classier can determine if surge arresters are pol-
luted, degraded, etc., with high accuracy. The size of neural grids
used in this case is slightly larger, as the complexity of the problem
increases. The other comparative parameters (Eq and Tp ) exhibit
better behavior for neural grids with 16 16 neurons. The net-
work exhibits the same capability of classication for larger neural
grids; however, network size increments conduct to blowing up
of the time processing. It was concluded that due to the uniform
performance of the classication system, neural grids with 16 16
neurons yields accurate results on the estimation of the arrester
operation condition and on the identication of the type of failure
present in surge arresters.
The neural maps of the proposed classier trained with
databases A1 and A2 are shown in Figs. 10 and 11, respectively. Each
cell corresponds to an articial neuron. Each surge arrester opera-
tion condition (according to Table 2) is shown on the neural maps.
Consequently, for the map shown in Fig. 10, the cells with label ok
correspond to neurons that activated for arresters on good condi-
tions; whereas the cells with labels def correspond to the defective
surge arrester.
The neural map, shown in Fig. 11 points out the capacity of the
classication system to cluster the different arrester operation con-
ditions according to their similarities. For example, the total leakage
current signal of the surge arrester type A with internal humidity
will activate the articial neurons on the region on the top-left cor-
ner of the neural map. So, when an unknown signal activates this
region, it was concluded that the surge arrester has internal humid-
ity. The same analysis can be made for the others surge arrester
operations conditions. In conclusion, the classier system is both
capable of clustering similar patterns as present, graphically, and
do the surge arrester condition by analyzing the features extracted
from the total leakage current.
Finally, a comparative analysis between the proposed method
and the traditional capacitive compensation approach was carried
out. Normally, the arrester monitoring is based on the quanti-
cation of the resistive component in the total leakage current.
To estimate the resistive components of the measured current
signal, the technique proposed by [15] was applied. The results of
 G.R.S. Lira et al. / Electric Power Systems Research 108 (2014) 315321
Fig. 11. Classier trained for database A2.
Fig. 12. Typical waveforms of some estimated resistive currents.
such decomposition are shown Fig. 12. As it can be observed, no
signicative dierences were obtained between the peak values of
the estimated resistive currents, except for the most severe type
of failure (varistor degradation). This behavior is similar to the
one shown on Fig. 4, where the total leakage current is presented.
This example shows how difcult it can be to perform reliable
and accurate surge arrester monitoring simply by evaluating the
peak (or rms) value of the resistive current. Additionally, this
type of technique requires measurement of the applied voltage,
which is a disadvantage. With relation to the computational
efforts, the compensation technique takes about 50 times more
processing time than the proposed technique, because it employs
an interactive algorithm to estimate the resistive component.
8. Conclusions
It has been proposed a technique capable of performing the
surge arrester monitoring and diagnosis by analyzing the total
321
leakage current, avoiding, therefore, the measuring of the applied
voltage, the utilization of complex measuring arrangements, the
decomposition of the total current along their capacitive and
resistive components as it is common in others methodologies
mentioned in the literature. These methodologies are sometimes
subjected to technical limitations, besides safety and operational
restrictions of power utilities.
The proposed classifying system is based on the use of self-
organizing articial neural networks (SOM network) for analysis
of features extracted exclusively from the total leakage current
of the surge arresters when they are submitted to operation
voltage. It has been extracted here the features related to the har-
monic components of the leakage current signal by means of a
very fast algorithm (appropriated to implementation on embed-
ded systems). From these features, the SOM network has been
capable of clustering the patterns according to their similari-
ties.
Several types of failures on metal-oxide surge arresters have
been simulated in laboratory. With the proposed technique one has
been capable to identify the arrester operation condition (defective
or not) with a hit ratio of almost 98%. Besides, it has been possible
to determine the type of failure (internal humidity, supercial pol-
lution, etc.) at high hit ratios (98%). So, it has been concluded that
it is possible to perform the monitoring and diagnosis of ZnO surge
arrester with higher accuracy, exclusively from the analysis of the
total leakage current.
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