Partial discharge & Tan delta Testing

As a simple and highly effective method to assess the dielectric condition of medium voltage cables, tangent delta measurement is the method to detect treeing in the insulation.

While partial discharge measurement is suitable for detecting electrical trees, tangent delta measurement – also referred to as dissipation factor measurement – detects water trees which have formed in the insulation of the device under test.

The data collected is compared to measurement values from the same cable taken during the acceptance test. That allows classification of the dielectric condition (new, strongly aged, faulty) of the cable.

Partial Discharge and Tan delta Testing can allow you determine to your planned preventative maintenance, repair or the replacement of your switchboards and other equipment, resulting in a preventative method rather than having to replace equipment such as switchboards as an emergency which will incur uneconomical cost and downtime.

Partial discharge occurs within layers of insulation of High Voltage equipment, it is a low level discharge that occurs within cables, joints, terminations, switchgear. Each discharge while at low level is crossing the air space gap present within layers of insulation or production faults within the material.
Repeated discharge eventually breaks down the insulation to create a failure in the insulation, this is usually catastrophic and result in a replacement of usually a highly expensive piece of equipment.

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