The Science Behind Partial Discharge Occurrences

By Author: Adair Sawyer
Total Articles: 421
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Electricity is at the same time something that we depend on almost every moment of our daily lives and something that could harm us a great deal if we were to be exposed to it without protection of some sort. That is where insulators come in, as they prevent electricity from traveling to our bodies by being made of materials that are not electrically conductive. Wires in a regular household, for example, are sheathed within a rubber coating along their entire length, which protects people within the household from being electrocuted by the currents flowing along the metal wires running along the inside of that sheath. The question, however, is what happens when breaks happen along that insulating sheath? EATechnologies offer specialized partial discharge monitoring systems that have been designed to provide the answer to that exact question.

When it comes to industrial operations, insulators are used for much more demanding tasks than simply shielding household wires. There, insulators are used to cover large machines that have extremely high voltage electrical currents running through them. And while it may not seem ...
... like it, being in such close proximity to high voltage currents places a great deal of stress on these insulators. Every once in a while small cracks or imperfections will develop in the insulators on high voltage equipment. When this happens, the electricity that was previously contained within the equipment by the presence of the insulator escapes and travels through the air. Most of the time it simply travels across the gap in the insulator, and this causes a discharge of electrical energy known as a partial discharge.

A partial discharge is not a cause for worry in and of itself. Although it is caused by small cracks in insulation material, that in itself will not cause an insulation failure. It is indicative of a problem with the insulation or the insulation material, however, and that is definitely a cause for worry. Partial discharge often precedes a more serious breakdown in the insulation of a piece of high voltage equipment, and a serious breakdown could have disastrous consequences in the form of fires or even explosions. With that in mind, EATechnologies have developed and brought to market a variety of monitoring systems that can be used to detect partial discharge occurrences.

EATechnologies is certainly not the only company to have entered the insulation monitoring market, but its solutions have proven to be effective at combating this problem. With continuous monitoring solutions from EATechnologies, any changes in the regular state of insulators will be detected and you or your operations manager will be notified. If those changes move outside of an acceptable range of values, you will then have to engage the services of electrical engineers to determine exactly what the problem is.

The key, however is knowing that there exists a problem in the first place. Once you know that there is a problem, then it can be addressed. Without the knowledge that there is a problem, it will remain there hidden, a ticking time-bomb, till the moment when it explodes into a full-blown catastrophe. This is where monitoring systems from EATechnologies prove their worth and provide you with a much-needed early warning every time an impending problem looms on the horizon.
With partial discharge monitoring technology from Dynamic Ratings or EATechnologies, you will never be caught unawares by insulation failure and will always have the opportunity to catch impending problems in their infancy, saving your operation a great deal of money and frustration.