Research Projects

With the grand success of universal electrification in India on April 2018, by the central government, India now need to focus on 24x7 electricity for all households in the country. There are frequent power cuts in most of the places in India, despite having generation capacity two times higher that demand. Report of standing committee of experts on failures of 220 kV and above substation equipment published yearly by Central Electricity Authority, Ministry of Power, Gov. of India, raises the alarm. The most of the interruptions in power supply are mainly due to failures of power apparatus. The standing committee observed that failures are primarily due to ageing and failure of insulation system, and improper maintenance practices. The committee suggested to implement modern condition based monitoring and predictive maintenance. In this context the present proposal aimed to provide partial discharge monitoring for Gas Insulated Switchgear (GIS). The market size of PD monitoring system for GIS in India is approximately 50 Cores (INR) yearly, and mostly imported. GIS forms an essential component of modern power transmission networks. Despite their high reliability, GIS can develop insulation defects resulting in partial discharges (PD), potentially leading to equipment failures and costly outages. The Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) method has emerged as a robust technique for PD detection in GIS, offering superior sensitivity to insulation defects and immunity from external electromagnetic interference. However, existing UHF sensors are omnidirectional therefore limited in range and signal quality when used specially to the GIS structure. This project aims to develop and validate a novel directional UHF sensor specifically designed for real-time, detection and localization of partial discharge events within GIS as per the standard IEC 62478. The scientific objective is to significantly enhance PD detection sensitivity and spatial resolution, providing defect localization and reducing the number of sensors required in a GIS system. It hypothesized that integrating a directional UHF sensor array optimized for GIS internal geometry will allow for improved PD detection. The developed sensor aimed to comply the National Grid Company (NGC) guideline of the wideband sensing using UHF sensor in GIS. Apart from the sensor development a laboratory test system for sensitivity verification as per the recommendation of CIGRE working group will be developed that will be further used for validating the compliances of different sensors with the NGC guidelines, as mandated by Indian power utilities. The main works involve: i. Design and simulation of various directional UHF sensor antenna configurations. ii. Laboratory validation using controlled artificial PD sources following standard IEC 60270, IEC 62478 and CIGRE (TB 654) guidelines. iii. Comparative analysis of the directional sensor performance against conventional nondirectional sensors. iv. Real-time monitoring validation under operational conditions within actual GIS installations.