Optical Partial Discharge Diagnosis in SF₆ Gas-Insulated System With SiPM-Based Sensor Array

This paper aims to promote optical partial discharge (PD) detection from laboratory scale to practical application for sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)-insulated power equipment. First, a micro silicon photomultiplier (SiPM)-based PD sensor is evaluated for detecting PDs in SF6gas and is proven to have the equivalent properties with pulse current acquisition and vacuum photomultiplier tube in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio, pulse resolution, and linearity. Then, a double-spectral PD sensor based on SiPM is first proposed and developed to realize a more specific PD diagnosis. It is demonstrated that by using the double-spectral PD sensor not only stochastic PD patterns can be obtained for PD recognition, but PD severity can be estimated as well.