Most of us started our electrical careers with fairly good knowledge about the practical aspects of our jobs. We understood voltage, current, power, resistance, etc. We mastered the more esoteric areas such as electrical fields and stress control and only revisited these topics if our day-to-day job required it. Partial discharge (PD) is one of those areas where we might …

As time progresses and a cable system ages, the system’s bulk dielectric strength degrades. During this aging process, artifacts such as water trees, delamination, voids, and shield corrosion raise the local stress placed on the cable during normal operation. The exact way in which the strength of a device degrades depends upon many factors including voltage, thermal stresses, maintenance practices, …

Methods to check medium voltage cable integrity have evolved drastically in the last 30 to 40 years. The DC hipot test has largely been replaced by the 0.1 Hz very-low-frequency (VLF) test, and North American (IEEE) and European (IEC, CE, CIGRE) standards specify the VLF test method for solid dielectric medium-voltage cables. Throughout these years, the 0.1 Hz VLF test …