Up till now we have seen some different types of testing methods specially the harmonics methods.

Now we have another type of harmonic method known as Harmonic Analysis Using 3rd component. This method or technique is presented by Mr. Shirakawa and Mr. K Goto in their research paper. The idea behind this technique is that the curve of ageing of the arrester is similar to the curve for the increase in the amplitude of the 3rd harmonic component. The main advantage of this method is that it is cheap and easy to use. This is the actual purpose that we make this device. In countries like Pakistan, companies do not invest too much money in the equipment that do not effect the system directly. The other advantage is that in this method it is not necessary to separate the capacitive and resistive current. We can do it for high accuracy but it is not necessary. Therefore it is also simple in construction. Obviously with some advantages it has a disadvantage also that it is not too much accurate as the other harmonic methods are. So to overcome this we have to perform test approximately twice time as compared to some other accurate methods. The device they proposed is analog. To achieve the high accuracy they divide the 3rd harmonics component with the total leakage current. So in order to do so, they extract the total and 3rd harmonic component. This ratio is very important to predict its remaining life or to know about its health. Actually what they do is to record the value and on comparing it with the previous reading the present condition is predicted. Here is the figure. This is the CT from where they extract current from grounding wire. This current is taken to meter via two ways. One is directly which give total current and via filter which give 3rd harmonic component. So due to analog design readings are recorded and calculated manually. Now from onwards we start our work
Page 1 of 3

So the first step is the design of the system. We designed the same system using digital approach i.e. the use of microcontroller. Due to the use of the microcontroller there is a wide room for expansion which includes the use of Memory Cards for more data storage and we can also interface the device directly to the computer. Block diagram is shown here The first block is the current extraction block. The value of the extracted current is very small so we need some amplification. After amplification we just separate the total and the 3rd harmonic component and then feed these two input to the built in analog to digital converter block in microcontroller. After this the calculation of dividing is performed and the results are displayed. But we have another method to do so that is Fast Fourier Transform method in which first analog to digital conversion is performed then FFT is taken by microcontroller using radix-2 algorithm. And then calculations are performed. After this simple design we move towards the simulation of the arrester to verify the characteristics of the surge arrester at different conditions. SIMULINK from MATHS Works MATLAB helps us to do so. Here is the block diagram 1. Three Phase Source: It provides the model of the 3 phase generator with internal resistance and reactance. We have to simulate only one arrester so we use its one phase only i.e. phase A. 2. Three Phase Load: It is the requirement of surge arrester block that the current must flow in the lines where it is placed. So to make the path of the current from the generator we use Three Phase Parallel RLC Load block. 3. Surge Arrester: It is the metal oxide arrester which is nonlinear in nature i.e. its resistance changes with voltage. This is the main component to which we have to perform analysis. 4. Powergui: it is actually the environmental block for SimPowerSystem models. Without this block we cannot use any of the SimPowerSystems block.
Page 2 of 3

5. Multimeter: It is connected with the surge arrester to find the voltage and current waveform of the arrester. 6. Zero-Order Hold: It is use for sampling the output of the multimeter. We are in 50Hz system so we use the sampling time as 1msec. 7. Buffer: It is used to hold data for making the fast sampled output to slow input for spectrum scope. 8. Time Scope: It is just connected to see that which waveform is selected for the Fourier transform or FFT. It displays the waveform against time coming into it. 9. Spectrum Scope: It shows the FFT of the signal coming to it. Now the results are This is the voltage waveform of the system. This is completely sinusoidal. This is the leakage current waveform which is not a sinusoidal. So the FFT of this current waveform is this one. We can note that the 3rd component is greater in magnitude than the fundamental one. This is all from my part, now jahanzaib will tell you something more.

Page 3 of 3