Thermal Monitoring and Reliability Analysis System
for Underground Substation
T.WANG, Q.G.WANG, Peng WANG Y.X.ZHANG
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
Abstract—A thermal monitoring and reliability analysis
system for underground substation is introduced in this paper.
Back propagation (BP) neural network is applied in the proposed
system for temperature prediction; life estimation model is
utilized for estimating residual life span of transformer. This
system is capable of real time on-line monitoring, early warning,
control and alarm for substation operation. In addition, with
novel algorithms the proposed system is also capable of
forecasting failure of power facilities as well as ambient
environment of transformer room. It could be employed in
substation with various hazardous conditions for intelligent and
safe operation of power equipment.
Keywords— Thermal monitoring; reliability analysis; power
facilities; environment condition; BP neural network and life
estimation
I. INTRODUCTION
As electrical power load of city and difficulty of land
acquisition became a serious problem in Singapore, a
substation is constructed underground in Jurong Rock Cavern
(JRC) instead of conventional aboveground position. Thermal
performances of power system facilities are key problems for
rated output once the operating environment has changed, a
particular example is the hot spot temperature of transformer,
which is the most important limiting factor of a transformer
loading and aging [1-3]. Cast-resin dry-type transformer is
selected in JRC substation to prevent fire and environmental
contamination. Resin used by these transformers is class F
insulation with insulation system temperature of 155 °C [4].
The failures of transformers always cause irreversible internal
damage to the transformer itself as well as to other external
electrical utilities. In addition, components of power system
such as transformers and power cables generate heat as a
consequence of ohmic and magnetic losses. Heat dissipation
and ventilation need to be carefully studied to prevent
operation failure and keep power equipment in service for
long time [5]. Thus, analysis of the temperature behavior of
such transformer and its surrounding environment is
considered as one of great importance to ensure safe and
reliable operation of underground substation.
When the transformer is in operation, part of the
electromagnetic energy is transformed into heat energy, i.e.
the transformer generates energy loss in the winding and other
components, which is converted into heat. Part of the heat lead
to rise of the transformer temperature and other part distribute
‹,(((
to the surrounding medium. Thermal performance of dry-type
transformer has been continuously studied and environmental
condition monitoring of indoor/underground substation
attracts more and more attention in recent years. A lot of
papers have investigated thermal model of dry-type
transformers. Zheng [6] developed a mathematical model for
dry-type transformer to describe the thermal field of windings.
Rahimpour [4] analyzed transformer behavior with finite
difference method. Pierce [7] considered the relationship
between hot spot temperature and ventilation of transformer
based on experimental data. Cho [8] investigated temperature
distribution and thermal stress of 50kVA pole cast resin
transformer by FEM program. Based on these models, heat
dissipation and ventilation model of indoor/underground
substation was conducted, which provided an effective way
for environmental monitoring of substation. Moldoveanu [9]
presented an online temperature evaluation technique for
electrical equipment. However, his analysis largely depended
on discrete inspection and no complete system was proposed.
Velasquez [10] raised a preventive maintenance method for
electrical utilities in substation, and Belahcen introduced a
remote monitoring method for diagnosis of electrical machine,
therefore, there are neither details of reliability estimation nor
failure probability analysis. Furthermore, comprehensive
thermal monitoring systems that are capable for substation and
electrical equipment located in hazardous environment, e.g.
deep underground with hot and humid as well as high salinity
ambient condition have not been reported yet.
In this paper, an intelligent thermal monitoring and
reliability analysis system (TMRAS) that targets for electrical
equipment as well as ambient substation environment and is
capable of temperature prediction, off-limit probability
calculation and equipment life evaluation is introduced. Back
propagation (BP) neural network is applied in the proposed
system for prediction and evaluation based on recorded data.
Functionality design of the transformer and substation thermal
monitoring system is described in Section II while BP neural
networks for temperature prediction are explained in section
III. Furthermore, algorithms for failure probability analysis
and residual life estimation are presented in section IV, and a
conclusion is drawn in the final part.
II. FUNCTIONALITY DESIGN OF TMRAS
The proposed TMRAS could be divided into two parts.
 Fig1. Flow chart of TMRAS
The first part is temperature prediction of both transformer
hotspot and ambient environment while the second part is
reliability analysis for operation planning, early warning and
maintenance respectively for transformer as well as indoor
environmental condition of substation. The flow chart of
proposed system is shown in Fig. 1.
Parameters indicating the transformer operation status and
environment condition are recorded by respective transducers.
For instance, transformer partial discharge ( QPD ) is measured
by transient earth voltage (TEV) sensors, hotspot temperature
( Ths ) is detected by PT100 temperature sensors with controller
Fig2. Architecture of data collection system
‹,(((
connected to communication server. According to IEC
standards, PT100 is inserted in the center of top yoke and as
close as practicable to the innermost low-voltage winding
conductors at the top of the winding, the measurement is on
the center leg of a three-phase unit; ambient temperature
( Tambient ) and humidity (H) is recorded by wireless sensors
attached on the wall; transformer load current ( I load ) is read
by current transformers; and the power of air conditioner
( Pair − con ) which is used in the transformer room for cooling
and dehumidification is monitored by power meter.
Architecture of the data collection system is shown in Fig. 2.
To collect measurement data, field servers are installed in the
transformer rooms. Data is extracted from distributed control
system (DCS) of the substation and stored in the database
server located at the control room. Finally, all data in the
database server are transferred to the remote data analysis
server 
According to IEC standards, normal service conditions for
indoor/underground transformer room as well as transformer
are listed below:
1) Temperature of cooling air should never exceed
40°C; the average ambient air temperature should never
exceeds 30°C in any one day.
2) Humidity of air should below 60% relative humidity
daily (RHD).
3) The transformer hotspot temperature could not
exceed 155°C and the maximum temperature rise should never
be more than 100°C.
When detected parameters (temperature, humidity) are
beyond normal service conditions, alarm should be triggered
for further protective actions.
Back propagation (BP) neural network is introduced for
prediction of hot spot temperature and ambient environment
temperature. Operation parameters recorded by transducers are
used in training algorithm. Based on hot spot temperature
prediction, residual life span of transformer could be estimated
with life loss model. Predictive parameters are employed in
setting up maintenance plan as well as sending early warning
to substation management staff. Early warning is triggered
when the off-limit probability of hotspot temperature or
ambient environment temperature is higher than 60%. This
trigger standard is chosen from the minimum off-limit
probability of 20 testing samples.

Fig3. HTBPNN and ETBPNN schematic input/output configurations
III. BP NEURAL NETWORK BASED PREDICTION OF HOTSPOT AND
AMBIENT ENVIRONMENT TEMPERATURE
BP neural network consists of input layer, hide layers
(could be one layer or several) and output layer. The training
is to adjust the numerical values of weights and internal
threshold of each neuron. The network is trained by initially
selecting small random weights and internal threshold and
then presenting all training data. Weights and thresholds are
adjusted after every training example is presented to the
network; until the weight converges or the error is reduced to
acceptable value. According to Kolmogorov Theorem, any
continuous real-valued function can be exactly implemented
by a 3-layer neural network. Therefore, a 3-layer BP neural
network (BPNN) is applied in our model to predict
transformer winding hot spot temperature and PD. Besides,
load harmonics have negative effects on operation of
transformer. To improve accuracy, we make discussion about
hotspot temperature prediction with load harmonics in section
B. However, the proportion of load harmonics is very small,
we usually ignores its effects to simplify the calculation
process, as is shown in section A.
A. BP neural network structure without load harmonics
a) Input/output design
There includes two BP neural networks in our system, one
is used for transformer hotspot temperature prediction, named
as hotspot temperature BP neural network (HTBPNN);
another is applied in ambient environment temperature
prediction, which we call it environment temperature BP
neural network (ETBPNN). Operation status (load current)
affects directly to the thermal characteristic of transformer as
well as service conditions; we regard it as the input for both
BP neural networks. Besides, PD quantity and ambient
temperature are proportion to transformer thermal
performance; we also regarded them as the input of HTBPNN.
The working status of air-conditioner in transformer room and
humidity are the inputs of ETBPNN in addition to ambient
temperature and load current. The output of HTBPNN is the
predicted hotspot temperature of winding, and predicted
ambient environment temperature is the output of HTBPNN.
A delay unit is introduced in the network as well to retain the
previous system status as next moment input to the networks.
The HTBPNN and ETBPNN schematic input/output
configurations are shown in Fig. 3. Therefore, both HTBPNN
and ETBPNN have the same structure with 6 inputs and 1
‹,(((
output. The training processes are the same for these two
neural networks.
b) Hidden layer design
Heuristic method is applied in network training process to
determine the number of neurons in hidden layer of BP neural
network according to the following empirical formula [11]:
l = n + m +α (1)
Where l is the number of hide layer neurons, n is the
number of input neurons, m is the number of output neurons,
Įε[1,10] and it is a constant. To find out the optimal neuron
numbers in hidden layer with minimum training error, we tried
every different number of neurons in hidden layer for 10
times.
c) Preprocess of experimental data
Normalized preprocess is applied to input and output
samples as we utilized standard sigmoid function. The training
is more effective if input and output parameters belong to [0.2,
(a)
(b)
Fig4. Equivalent circuits: (a) VSD, (b) Substation with VSD
0.8] ~ [0.1, 0.9] [12-14], therefore, we preprocessed our
training samples with the following equation:
xi − xmin
yi = 0.1 + * 0.8 (2)
xmax − xmin
In which xi is the real data, xmax and xmin are the maximum
and minimum value among all the data.
d) Training process
The training of BPNN is conducted based on testing data
of transformer under different operation load and ambient
environment. We divided experimental data into training set
and test set in 3:1 ratio, the error between predictions and
measured is recorded for BPNN adjustment as well as failure
probability calculation.
B. BP neural network structure with load harmonics
The main power loads in the underground substation are
draining pumps and air conditioners, and they are typical
current harmonic sources in power systems. The equivalent
 Fig5. HTBPNN schematic input/output configuration with harmonic loads

circuit for harmonic analysis of variable speed drive (VSD) in (a)

those loads is shown in Fig. 4 [15-17]. The grid voltage
generates a pulsating DC voltage at the DC side after a three-
phase rectifier, and then the DC current is produced when the
DC voltage acts on the load. The voltage and current at the AC
side yields a harmonic distortion because of the coupling
interaction between the rectifier and the power grid.
The coupling relationship between harmonic components
of the terminal current and voltage of VSD in Fig. 4(a) can be
obtained by the harmonic coupling admittance matrix model (b)
[16]. The harmonic current of VSD can be written as:
I Ch = YC+U k + YC−U k∗ (3)

where ICh is the AC current harmonic vector of VSD; Uk

and Uk* are the harmonic voltage vector and its conjugate
vector, respectively; and YC+ and YC- are the coupled harmonic
admittance matrices. In Fig. 4(b), there are harmonic loads and
other common loads in the low-voltage side of transformer; ZS (c)
and ZT are the grid impedance and the transformer impedance. Fig6. (a) Residual frequency distribution of ambient environment
Thus the low-voltage side current can be given as: temperature. (b) Residual frequency distribution of hotspot temperature
prediction without load harmonics. (c) Residual frequency distribution of
I h = I Ch + I Lh = (YC+ + YL )U k + YC−U k∗ (4) hotspot temperature prediction with load harmonics.
where ILh and YL are the AC current harmonic and
admittance matrix of common loads. The other load current is harmonic loss factors [19]. The harmonic loss factors FECL and
generated by the voltage Uk and its admittance matrix YL is a FSL are:
diagonal matrix. According the equivalent circuit of Fig. 4(b),
2 2
the voltage equation can be given as: H
§I · H
§ Ih ·
FECL = ¦ ¨ h ¸ h 2 ¦¨ I ¸
(7)
U k = U Sk − ( Z Sk + Z Tk )( I Ch + I Lh ) h =1 © I1 ¹ h =1 © 1 ¹
(5) 2 2
= U Sk − ( Z Sk + Z Tk ) ª¬ (YC+ + YL )U k + YC−U k∗ º¼
H
§I · H
§ Ih ·
FSL = ¦ ¨ h ¸ h 0.8 ¦¨ I ¸
(8)
h =1 © I1 ¹ h =1 © 1 ¹
The terminal voltage of load can be calculated based on (5)
using an iterative algorithm of harmonic power flow [18], and The additional power loss by harmonic currents is:
then the transformer current can be obtained by substituting
the voltage into (4). ΔP =ΔPCL + ΔPECL + ΔPSL
H (9)
The power losses of transformer contain the copper loss, = ¦ I h2 Rdc + FECL PECL + FSL PSL
eddy-current loss and stray loss, while the harmonic current i =2

will lead to additional power losses. Therefore, the thermal

where PECL and PSL are the eddy-current loss and stray loss
model of transformer has to take the additional power losses
when the transformer is operating in the rated condition.
by harmonic current as an input of HTBPNN which is shown
in Fig. 5. For load harmonic currents, the additional copper This HTBPNN have the same structure with 8 inputs and 1
loss is: output. The design and training processes of neural network
H
are the same as those without harmonic load.
ΔPCL = ¦ I h2 Rdc (6)
i =2

where Rdc is the DC loss resistance of transformer, H is the

maximum order of harmonics. The relative proportions of
eddy-current loss and stray loss can be determined by

‹,(((
 Pij ( X a′ ) = Pij ( xi′ > xi ,lim − Δxi , j −1 ) = 1 − F ( xi ,lim − Δxi , j −1 ) (10)

where the predicted value of x’i follows normal

distribution. Recorded hot spot temperature data and
corresponding off-limit probability is shown in Fig. 7. Actual
fault occurred at the 45th minutes. As shown in Fig. 7, hot spot
temperature raised drastically after the 60th minutes and it
reached 145°C after the 70th minutes which triggered alarm
signal. On the other hand, off-limit probability also rose
significantly with hot spot temperature and run beyond the
threshold value 0.6. Hence an early warning signal
accordingly by the proposed system generated. This shows it
is possible to detect potential breakdown of transformer
according to failure probability calculation based on prediction
error. In addition, because of the uncontrollable transformer
load, temperature fluctuates occurs frequently as is shown in
Fig. 7. However, the variation amplitude caused by load
variation is much smaller than that caused by fault.

B. Residual life estimation of dry-type transformer

Fig7. Ambient environment temperature and residual frequency Heat is generated during transformer operation, the
distribution of hotspot prediction without load harmonics and with load transformer temperature will remain stable when heat
harmonics values
generation equals to heat dissipation. However, when winding
temperature goes too high, it will accelerate the aging process
IV. THERMAL RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF UNDERGROUND of transformer, and shorten its residual life. When hotspot
SUBSTATION temperature is higher than normal service condition limitation,
there will be a sharp cut-off to transformer’s service life as
A. Failure probability calculation based on prediction error high temperature destroys the insulating capacity of windings.
Insulating capability of cast-resin represents the life of cast-
For a substation, both off-limits of transformer hotspot resin dry-type transformer. During operation process of
temperature and environmental service condition may cause transformer, heat is absorbed by the insulating material: cast-
the power facilities out of service and bring serious loss. The resin, which leads to the change of cast-resin molecular
off-limit probability could be determined based on their structure and the degradation of its insulation performance.
prediction values. In our system, early warning is triggered
when the off-limit probability is larger than 60%. Several factors affect the residual life of dry-type
transformer: environmental condition, altitude, heat generation
According to past year studies [20-22], prediction error of as well as harmonic. In this paper, we focus on the relationship
neural network satisfied the normal distribution, and the between transformer’s service life and environmental
probability density of prediction can be obtained based on condition, heat generation of transformer.
historical prediction and real data. Fig. 6 is the residual
frequency distribution of hotspot and ambient environment Life span of a dry-type transformer is defined as Ln during
temperature prediction values. Based on normal distribution the normal operation status, and this is a basic reference for
features of prediction errors, the off-limit probability of the ith the life evaluation of transformer. The life loss of dry-type
parameter xi at the jth time step with the given prediction transformer at each time step can be determined by the aging
values X’a of autocorrelation parameters can be expressed as: rate K. The relationship between K and the hot-spot
temperature Ths of a dry-type transformer comes from
Arrhenius methodology [23] and is shown in equation (4):
TABLE I
b
Arrhenius’s equation constants Ln − Ths
Insulation Arrhenius Arrhenius Hotspot temperature K (Ths ) = e (4)
system constant: a constant: b under rated load a
(°C) Arrhenius’ equation constants are tabulated in Table 1.
A (105°C) 3.1×10-14 15900 95
According to Table I, a=9.6×10-17 and b=20475 are the
E (120°C) 5.48×10-15 17212 110
Arrhenius constants for a Class F insulation dry-type
B (130°C) 1.72×10-15 18115 120
transformer [24].
F (155°C) 9.6×10-18 20475 145
H (180°C) 5.35×10-17 22979 170 Under the variable hot-spot temperatures, the life loss of
D (200°C) 5.31×10-19 25086 190 transformer from t=0 to t1 and the corresponding residual life
C (220°C) 5.26×10-20 27285 210 can be calculated as,

‹,(((
 t1 t1 b [8]
Ln − Ths (t )
Lloss (t1 ) = ³ K (Ths )dt = ³ e dt
0 0
a (5)
Lres (t1 ) = Ln − Lloss (t1 ) [9]
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, an on-line thermal monitoring and reliability
analysis system for cast-resin dry-type transformer and [10]
transformer room at underground substation is proposed. BP
neural network training algorithm is introduced in temperature
prediction for both transformer hotspot and ambient
environment with recorded data. Based on the predicted
[11]
temperature, temperature off-limit probability could be
evaluated, when it exceeds 60%, early warning is triggered for
[12]
protective actions. In addition, according to Arrhenius
equation, residual life of cast-resin dry-type transformer is
estimated. This system satisfies the intelligent on-line [13]
condition monitoring requirements for underground
substation, brings convenience to substation management
staff. By combining with other monitoring system, it could [14]
make the unattended substation practical. [15]
[16]
Acknowledgement
This project and publication were funded by NTU-JTC
Infrastructure Research Centre Grant titled “Study of
[17]
Reliability of Power Systems for Underground Cavern
Facilities”. This material is also based upon work supported
by Jurong Rock Cavern, Singapore. Any opinions, findings, [18]
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication
are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the JTC and NTU. Data collection and analysis was [19]
performed by the authors of this paper. The authors of this
paper include researchers and/or educators affiliated with the
[20]
grant universities and extension services in their respective
business units.
[21]
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