Entropy-Based Characterization of the Transient Phenomena—Systemic Approach

Abstract

The difficulties of predictive maintenance of power grids are related to the large spread of electrical infrastructures and the definition of early warning indicators. Such indicator is the partial discharge activities—which can be very informative about the rising insulation problems of electrical materials. However, the detection and the localization of the partial discharges are very complicate tasks and are currently subject to intensive studies in both theoretical and practical domains. The traditional way to approach the global surveillance of partial discharge sources is to first detect it and the second is to attempt to localize their positions. Despite the numerous proposed approaches, based on advanced transient signal processing tools, there is no any operational technique to efficiently asses the partial discharge sources in a real power network. In this context, our paper proposes a new approach based on the global evaluation of entropy of transient phenomena detected in a power network, without needing any localization of the sources of these phenomena. We will show that this approach provides an effective evaluation of partial discharges sources. Moreover, since the technique requires a reduced number of sensors, it is very advantageous to use in real contexts.

Keywords

• spectral entropy
• phase diagram-based entropy
• phase diagram representation
• electrical transient
• partial discharges