Practical measurements of partial discharges in a smart grid laboratory

On-line measurement and monitoring of partial discharges in an MV cable system, including terminations and joints, is a challenging subject because it interacts with other components of the distribution network such as ring main units. The stochastic nature of partial discharges, the different configurations of the network, the external noise and the lack of standard recommendations have consequentially made the quantification of this phenomena more difficult. This paper is an attempt to investigate the behaviour of a theoretical pulse propagation and a real partial discharge in different circuits with almost the same configuration, that can be easily configured in a real Smart Grid laboratory. Several experiments and measurements were performed in order to compare these circuits and to find a factor that represents the influence of different circuit components to use as a reference or calibration to ensure the validity of further measurements.