Detecting of partial discharge (PD) in rotating machines

HVPD have been developing and distributing simple to use handheld PD testers since 2007, with over 400 customers in the utility, transport, and oil and gas sectors using this type of equipment for safety screening and to support condition-based maintenance. In response to high customer demand, the PDS Insight Machines has been especially developed for testing rotating machines.

Dr Malcolm Seltzer-Grant, HVPD’s Technical Director, said: “The PDS Insight Machines unit will support our customers in testing motors and generators in a more cost effective way. The unit connects to pre-installed coupling capacitor sensors, which ultimately eliminates the need for an outage during periodic testing.”

The PDS Insight Machines belongs to a new generation of On-line Partial Discharge (OLPD) technology and is equipped with features including a Smart Docking Station, internal storage, barcode scanner, Bluetooth connectivity and a dedicated asset management tablet application - the OLPD Manager app - used for analysis, benchmarking and trending of results. The PDS Insight Machines unit measures PD levels, PD pulse count and cumulative PD activity across the 50/60Hz power cycle, enabling the user to determine the severity of any PD activity.

Rachel Stratton, HVPD’s Commercial Director, said: “Solving problems for our customers plays an important role in our product development. The PDS Insight Machines unit creates a new standard for OLPD handheld technology which supports customer needs in the rotating machines market. By combining four types of PD sensors - HVCC, HFCT, TEV and AA - it is the only handheld unit with the functionality to take PD measurements on rotating machines in addition to cables, switchgear and transformers.”