Effect of vacuum drying the insulation pressboard on partial discharge characteristics under ripple voltage conditions

The object of the research is partial discharges arising in a sample of the insulation pressboard. In most modern high-voltage direct current transmission schemes based on voltage-source converters six-pulse or twelve-pulse converters are used. The signal waveform on the direct current voltage side of a high-voltage direct current transmission is not pure direct current voltage and it has alternating current component. Since the partial discharge activity under distorted voltage is much different than that under pure direct current voltage, voltage ripples and voltage harmonics are the subject of various studies. This article examines the effect of vacuum drying the insulation pressboard on partial discharge characteristics at direct voltage ripples. The insulation pressboard was dried in a vacuum chamber with a residual pressure of 1 mm Hg. Among all the characteristics of a partial discharge, the main focus has been on the apparent charge of a partial discharge. The greater is the apparent charge value, the stronger is the destructive effect on high-voltage insulation. It was shown that drying the insulation in a vacuum chamber has the greatest effect on reducing the apparent charge of a partial discharge at direct current voltage than at alternating current voltage. After drying the insulation in a vacuum chamber, the amplitude of the partial discharge pulses was decreased by 99.3 % at direct current voltage in comparison with the moistened sample. After vacuum drying, at DC voltage, rare and very low magnitude partial discharges were recorded. The conducted research contributes to the development of methods for partial discharge detection under non-standard voltage conditions.