F E A T U R E A R T I C L E

Statistical Analysis of Online

Ultrahigh-Frequency Partial-Discharge
Measurement of Power Transformers
Key words: power transformer partial discharge, ultrahigh-frequency partial-discharge monitoring,
phase-resolved partial-discharge pattern

Introduction Michael Beltle, Andreas Müller,

The measurement of partial discharge (PD) has been estab-
lished as a common method for transformer testing using elec-
trical measurements according to IEC 60270 [1]. However, in
this article, an UHF approach is presented. The UHF method
was first introduced on gas-insulated switchgear but is also ap-
plicable to power transformers [2]. In the technique, an antenna
is inserted into the transformer tank through an oil valve. The
method detects PD by measuring electromagnetic emissions
originating from transient currents of PD [3], [4]. Because the
tank is grounded, it represents a Faraday cage shielding external
noise, which makes the UHF method less sensitive to external
PD such as corona.
Compared to electrical PD measurements, the UHF method
has to be treated differently. Unlike electrical PD measurements,
UHF measurements cannot be calibrated in terms of apparent
charge in picocoulombs because the strength of the electromag-
netic field is measured. However, like electrical measurements,
it is possible to correlate PD to the phase angle of the applied
voltage using the phase-resolved PD (PRPD) pattern.
This article presents an overview of UHF PD measurements
of a generator step-up transformer over a three-year period. Sev-
eral PD sources are active in the transformer, and fast changes
in the PD pattern and levels are observed. An approach for the
evaluation of measurement data is introduced, and the long-term
development of PD is discussed in the article. The aim is to dis-
criminate different PD sources from the PRPD pattern and clas-
sify them in terms of their level and frequency of occurrence on
a long-term basis. Thus, a classification of different sources and
their severity is attempted.
Experimental Setup
The UHF PD monitoring was performed on a 50-year-old
generator step-up transformer with a rated voltage of 110/10
kV and a rated power of 120 MVA. The generating unit mainly
operates in the winter season compensating peak-load days.
and Stefan Tenbohlen
Institute of Power Transmission and High
Voltage Technology, University of Stuttgart,
Pfaffenwaldring 47, 70569 Stuttgart,
Germany
The article discusses the ultrahigh-
frequency partial-discharge (PD)
monitoring of a 50-year-old genera-
tor step-up transformer with the aim
of being able to discriminate various
PD sources from the phase-resolved
PD pattern.
Since the beginning of the monitoring process in the summer
of 2009, the generator step-up transformer has been in service
for 80 days. An UHF probe (Figure 1) was installed in the DN
80 oil flange valve of the transformer [5], [6] for measurement
of UHF PD.
The UHF PD monitoring of the transformer was done with a
Doble Lemke LDS-6/UHF (Doble Lemke diagnostics, Dresden,
Germany) measuring system. The UHF PD signals were mea-
sured with approximately 35-dB amplification and a bandwidth
of 9 MHz at a center frequency of 505 MHz. Phase L1 was used
for phase correlation, and Matlab (software by Mathworks in
Nattick, MA) was used for data analysis.

November/December — Vol. 28, No. 6 0883-7554/12/$31/©2012/IEEE 17


Figure 1. The UHF probe with transformer DN 80 flange con-
nector for the inside-tank measurement of UHF partial dis-
charge.
Because the 110-kV paper–oil transformer bushing does not
have measuring taps, no electrical PD monitoring was done.
However, before the transformer was put into service, an electri-
cal PD measurement with external HV coupling capacitors was
done. It revealed different PD sources on each phase with PD
between 100 and 500 pC. Also, unsteady PD up to 1 nC was oc-
casionally observed [7].
Long-Term Analysis of PD
Number of PD Events
The first approach to evaluate the long-term PD of the trans-
former considered all UHF PD events. Figure 2 shows the num-
ber of recorded events and the corresponding maximum am-
plitude in millivolts over a three-year monitoring period. The
UHF-measured PD over one hour was accumulated and repre-
sents one bar in the plot. For a better survey, a compressed view
was used that neglects the days when the generating unit was
not in operation. At times the measurement system was over-
driven; a constant UHF amplitude is shown in Figure 2. The am-
plitudes of the overdriven PD pulses are not known; however,
their events were counted. Only PD above a noise level of 2 mV
up to the maximum at 25 mV was considered. The noise level is
defined by the highest antenna voltage level that is reached by
non-phase-correlated signals. The dark blue line in Figure 2 is a
moving average illustrating the high volatility of the PD activ-
Figure 2. Entire partial-discharge (PD) events per hour and
maximum amplitude in millivolts over a three-year period.
18 IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine
ity. No regularity or trend of PD events over time can be seen.
The mean value of all considered PDs was at 180,000 events
per hour, which corresponds to one event per cycle, whereas
the standard deviation was at 330,000 events per hour or 1.8
events per cycle (Table 1). The average of the UHF amplitude
was 15.38 mV.
The high volatility of PD events can be considered to make
a valid condition assessment of the transformer demanding. A
single electrical or UHF measurement, if performed at times
with high or low activity, could result in making a misleading
condition assessment of the transformer. So, continuous moni-
toring delivers considerable gain in information compared with
a single test measurement and represents the main advantage of
the technique.
Discrimination of PD Using PRPD Pattern
Prior electrical PD measurements according to IEC 60270 in-
dicated different PD sources in the transformer, and to discrimi-
nate the PD sources, the PRPD pattern method was used. Partial-
discharge sources are phase stable, and PRPD patterns can be
synthetically created by using one phase of the transformer as a
reference. In this study, phase L1 was used.
The UHF PD measurements showed a fast-changing PRPD
pattern over time. However, some patterns occurred regularly,
whereas others were only found a few times. Regularly occur-
ring patterns are considered to be typical for this transformer.
Figure 3 shows PRPD patterns of two different typical types.
The PDs were accumulated for one hour to generate the pre-
sented PRPD patterns, and the color indicates the number of PD
events per hour.
A third typical pattern is shown in Figure 4. The PD source
is characterized by the area and the shape it covers in the PRPD
pattern. The entire area of the PRPD pattern was defined by a
2-dimensional matrix given by the phase angle from 0 to 360° in
5° steps and the amplitude from 2 to 25 mV in 1-mV steps. Fig-
ure 5 shows the selected areas for source 1 in red color, covering
13% of the entire PRPD diagram area. All recorded PDs that lay
within the selected area were assigned to this PD source. Only
these PDs were selected from the entire UHF data and evaluated.
To be selective, the areas should be as small as possible. Large
areas covering the entire PRPD pattern do not provide any other
information.
This method was used for all introduced typical sources. Fig-
ure 6 shows the selected areas of the three different sources that
are determined in the following. Investigations are explained us-
ing source 1.
Table 1. Statistical Analysis of Long-Term UHF Partial-Discharge Measure-
ment.
Maximum number within one hour  4,500,000/hour = 25 per cycle
Minimum number within one hour  <200/hour = 0.001 per cycle
Mean value  180,000/hour = 1 per cycle
Standard deviation  330,000/hour = 1.8 per cycle

Figure 3. Two typical UHF phase-resolved partial-discharge
(PD) patterns present in the step-up transformer.
Figure 4. Phase-resolved partial-discharge (PD) pattern of
source 1.
November/December — Vol. 28, No. 6 19
Figure 5. Area of the phase-resolved partial-discharge (PD)
pattern assigned to source 1.
Analysis of Selected PD Sources
In Figure 7 all PD events inside the area of source 1 are accu-
mulated for one hour and plotted over time. As explained earlier,
a compressed data setup was used that neglects the times the
transformer is off-line. In this particular case, the source was
responsible for about 72,000 PD events per hour or 0.4 events
per cycle (mean value). The dark-blue line is a moving average
illustrating the high volatility of source 1.
Comparing the PD events of source 1 with the entire PD
events per hour from Figure 2 shows a rise of both curves at
the same time at hour 230. Hence, it can be concluded that this
selected source 1 influenced the entire number of PD. To evalu-
ate the contribution of a source on the entire number of PD, its
relative fraction was used.
Figure 8 shows the relative fraction of source 1. Therefore,
the amount of PD assigned to source 1 was divided by the entire
number of PD. The dark-blue line is a moving average illustrat-
Figure 6. Selected pattern areas of sources 2 (green), 3 (dark
blue), and 1 (light blue) for reference.
 Figure 7. Partial-discharge (PD) events of selected area of
source 1 per hour versus time. Moving average is plotted in
dark blue.
ing the changes of source 1 over time. On average, 48% of the
entire number of PD occurred in the area of source 1. Thus, on
average nearly half of all PDs can be assigned to source 1.
Both the number of PDs and the relative fraction were used
to compare different sources and to evaluate their influence on
the entire PD activity. The number of PD events per hour of all
three sources defined in Figure 6 is plotted in Figure 9. Source
1 showed the highest number of PD per hour and only small
variations over time compared with sources 2 and 3. Therefore,
source 1 can be considered as permanently active, whereas the
changes and the absolute number of PD of sources 2 and 3 il-
lustrate their smaller contribution to the entire PD activity of the
transformer. The relative influence of different sources on the
entire PD activity is shown in Figure 10.
On average, source 1 had the highest influence on the entire
PD activity. Nevertheless, at some times, the other sources be-
Figure 8. Relative activity of source 1 versus time. Moving aver-
age is plotted in dark blue. PD = partial discharge.
20 IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine
Figure 9. Average number of partial-discharge (PD) events of
sources 1, 2, and 3. Only days the transformer was in service
are considered.
came dominant. Source 3 had a low relative fraction (on average
13%; see Table 2) but showed a high volatility with times when
the source is dominant providing about 52% of all PDs (see Fig-
ure 10 at an operation time of 700 hours). Source 2 had a very
low relative fraction, with a mean value of 6% (see Table 2). At
one time, source 2 was dominant with a relative fraction of near-
ly 40%. Thus, the standard deviation for source 2 was high com-
pared with the mean value (see Table 2). On average, 62% of all
PDs were originated by the considered three sources. Therefore,
the selected sources are suited to describe the PD activity of the
transformer. By evaluating the sum of all three sources, it can
also be seen that there were rare times when they provided only
10 to 11% of the entire number of PD. These times have to be
investigated separately. The reasons for a low relative fraction
could be other sources dominating PRPD pattern, external noise,
and so on.
To perform an automated evaluation of PD, statistical meth-
ods were used. The presented approach combines the absolute
number of PDs of a source and its relative fraction with respect
to the entire number of PD. Figure 11 shows the relative fraction
on the x-axis and the corresponding absolute number of PDs
on the logarithmical-scaled y-axis of source 1; time dependency
is not included here. Again, every dot represents the accumu-
lated data of one hour. To qualify and quantify a pattern and thus
judge the relevance of a defined source, the mean value on the
x-axis, representing the relative fraction, and the mean value on
the y-axis, representing the average number of PD, can be used
to characterize the statistic behavior of the source.
Sources 2 and 3 were determined using the same methods.
Source 2 (green) covered 8.5% of the area of the PRPD pat-
tern. Source 3 (dark blue) covered 8.7% of the pattern. Figure 12
shows the absolute and the relative fractions of all three sources.
Source 2 (green) showed low relative fraction (mean value is
2%) and low numbers of PDs (4,000 events per hour or 0.02
per cycle on average). It represents an example for a source that
had a low influence on the entire PD activity of the transformer.
 Table 2. Statistical Parameters of the Three Partial-Discharge (PD) Sources.
Relative fraction per hour (%)
Source In percentage Standard deviation
Source 1 48 24
Source 2 2 6
Source 3 13 14
Source 3 (dark blue) had a relative fraction of 13% and 30,000
events per hour or 0.17 per cycle on average. Thus, the source
is of higher interest for long-term analysis. A direct comparison
with source 1 illustrates the differences between sources with
strong long-term activity and sources with alternating activity.
In comparison to Figure 9 and Figure 10, which illustrate the
time dependency of the different sources, the combined plot of
Figure 12 delivers a quick overview of different sources. Large
mean values of the relative fraction of the source indicate a
strong influence on the entire PD activity of a transformer. The
absolute number on the y-axis gives an impression on the actual
activity of a source. The development over time of the sources
can be evaluated by dividing the available UHF data in subse-
quent chronological parts and comparing the mean values of
these parts.
Table 2 summarizes the statistical data of all three sources
regarding absolute number of PD and its relative fraction. The
relative fraction of source 1 showed a small standard deviation
(half of the mean value), indicating a stable source. In compari-
son to this, the other sources had a standard deviation in the
range of the mean value (source 3) or even higher (source 2).
Conclusion
In this article, the evaluation of three years of UHF PD moni-
toring data on a 120-MVA generator step-up transformer is pre-
Figure 10. Relative fraction of all sources with respect to entire
number of partial discharges (PD) over time.
November/December — Vol. 28, No. 6 21
Absolute number of PD
Number of events Standard deviation
72,000/hour, 0.4/cycle 98,384
4,000/hour, 0.02/ cycle 12,059
30,000/hour, 0.16/cycle 76,906
sented. Ahead of the UHF PD monitoring, electrical PD mea-
surements according to IEC 60270 revealed at least 3 different
PD sources inside the transformer.
Using UHF PD measurement, the overall number of PDs
during a certain period of time showed high volatility. A trend
could not be recognized. To distinguish between different PD
sources, the PRPD pattern was used. Similar to the electrical
measurement, the UHF PRPD pattern showed different PD
sources. Long-time surveillance revealed the activity of these
sources. Most of them showed repetitive behavior but were not
permanently active. To manage the amount of available UHF
data, semiautomated evaluation was used. For each source, the
relevant data were extracted. The changes of a source could be
determined over the entire observation time. The source could
be described by the number of PD correlated to the source and
its relative fraction with respect to the entire number of PD. Dif-
ferent sources can be compared with each other, and their contri-
bution on the total PD activity can be used as an indicator for the
relevance of a source. Hence, long-term surveillance of different
PD sources becomes possible.
In comparison to PD monitoring, single measurements could
be performed at times with high or low activity and result in mis-
leading interpretations of the PD status of transformers. Thus,
the approach demonstrates the abilities of continuous UHF PD
monitoring and the gain of information it can generate in com-
Figure 11. Absolute number of partial-discharge (PD) events
versus relative fraction of source 1.

Figure 12. Absolute number of partial-discharge (PD) events
versus relative occurrence of assumed sources 2 and 3 from
Figure 6 (green and dark blue) and main source 1 as reference
(light blue).
parison with conventional measurement that provides only snap-
shot information. Therefore, PD monitoring is considered as a
useful extension for transformer assessment. Further investiga-
tions can optimize the presented method using automated pat-
tern recognition and evaluation.
References
[1] High-Voltage Test Techniques—Partial Discharge Measurements, IEC
Standard 60270, 3rd ed., International Electrotechnical Commission,
Geneva, Switzerland, 2000.
[2] M. Hikita, S. Ohtsuka, and S. Matsumoto, “Recent trend of the partial
discharge measurement technique using the UHF electromagnetic wave
detection method,” IEEJ Trans., no. 2, pp. 504–509, 2007.
[3] S. Tenbohlen, S. Hoek, D. Denissov, and S. M. Markalous, “Partial
discharge measurement in the ultra high frequency (UHF) range,” IEEE
Trans. Dielectr. Electr. Insul., vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 1544–1552, 2008.
[4] M. D. Judd, G. P. Cleary, and C. J. Bennoch, “Applying UHF partial
discharge detection to power transformers,” IEEE Power Eng. Rev., pp.
57–58, Aug. 2002.
[5] S. Coenen, S. Tenbohlen, T. Strehl, and S. Markalous, “Fundamental
characteristics of UHF PD probes and the radiation behaviour of PD
sources in power transformers,” International Symposium on High Volt-
age Engineering, 2009, Cape Town, South Africa, pp. 666–671.
[6] S. Coenen, S. Tenbohlen, S. M. Markalous, and T. Strehl, “Sensitivity of
UHF PD measurements in power transformers,” IEEE Trans. Dielectr.
Electr. Insul., vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 1553–1558, 2008.
[7] S. Tenbohlen, A. Pfeffer, and S. Coenen, “On-site experiences with multi-
terminal IEC PD measurements, UHF PD measurements and acoustic
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Electrical Insulation, 2010, paper no. 095.
22 IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine
Michael Beltle received the Dipl.-Ing.
degree in electrical engineering from the
University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 2009.
After his graduation he started working at
the Institute of Power Transmission and
High Voltage Technology, University of
Stuttgart. He operates in the field of power
transformer diagnostics and determines the
long-term development of partial discharg-
es and investigates the mechanical vibrations of the active parts
of transformers. He is member of CIGRE and the German Power
Engineering Society VDE-ETG.
Andreas Müller received the Dipl.-Ing.
degree in electrical engineering from the
University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 2008.
In 2009 he started working at the Institute
of Power Transmission and High Voltage
Technology, University of Stuttgart, in the
field of power transformer diagnostics. His
focus lies in the application of dissolved
gas analysis (DGA) and long-term moni-
toring of partial discharges. He is a member of the German Pow-
er Engineering Society VDE-ETG.
Stefan Tenbohlen (M ’07) received his
Diploma and Dr.-Ing. degrees from the
Technical University of Aachen, Germany,
in 1992 and 1997, respectively. In 1997
he joined AREVA Schorch Transforma-
toren GmbH, Monchengladbach, Ger-
many, where he was responsible for basic
research and product development, and
with this function, he worked in the field
of online monitoring of power transformers. From 2002 to 2004
he was the head of the electrical and mechanical design depart-
ment. In 2004, he was appointed as the professor and head of
the Institute of Power Transmission and High Voltage Technol-
ogy of the University of Stuttgart, Germany. In this position, his
main research fields are diagnostics of equipment of electrical
networks, development of high voltage measurement technique,
behavior of gas insulated insulation systems, and different as-
pects of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). Tenbohlen holds
several patents and published more than 130 papers. He is a
member of the German committees of CIGRE A2 (Power Trans-
formers), D1 (Emerging Technologies), C4 (System Technical
Performance), and several international working groups. Since
2008, he has been a member of the board of the German Power
Engineering Society VDE-ETG.